


Reintegration

by TrippingHazard



Series: The Reintegration Act [1]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers: Prime
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-04-28 00:44:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 27,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5071363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrippingHazard/pseuds/TrippingHazard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As refugees and survivors begin to return to Cybertron, Ultra Magnus tries to rebuild society on the newly restored planet, Knock Out tries to fit in amongst the Autobots, and Prowl and his new 'friends' try to return to Cybertron with a warning.<br/>Set after TF: Prime and Predacons Rising, folding in characters and concepts from the IDW G1 universe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> A lot of characters and concepts from the IDW comics will be introduced as characters. I'll be keeping everyone as in-character as possible, though with the different universes obviously the characters won't be exactly the same in terms of origins and what they did during the war.
> 
> I'll add to the tags as new characters are introduced in future chapters.
> 
> Edit: I've just updated all the tags, and I've included this fic in the IDW category as well as TF: Prime, because I'm introducing a lot more characters and concepts from the IDW universe than I had originally expected.
> 
> Edit 2: I shortened the title from "The Reintegration Act" to simply "Reintegration"; it sounds better, and it fits the theme of the story slightly better.

Ultra Magnus drafted the Reintegration Act not long after Optimus Prime's sacrifice. It was essentially a mass pardon for all former Decepticons aside from the most high ranking officers. The Vehicon troopers and miners were given a free pass, allowed to find work on Cybertron or leave the planet as they preferred--most chose to stay, happy to work for a leader less likely to throw them into combat situations they couldn't survive, or throw them off the ship when they were angry.

The Predacons, the few who remained, were wisely left alone. For Megatron, Starscream, Shockwave, and Knock Out, a trial was in order. They had all unanimously agreed that the safest thing to do with Soundwave was to leave him in the shadow zone where he couldn't hurt anyone.

Megatron, Starscream, and Shockwave ended up being contained indefinitely, without much chance of leniency. Knock Out, on the other hand, was a tricky case. The list of his crimes filled a whole datapad, but there was also the matter of his defection to take into account--in the end, he risked his life to help Team Prime. On top of that, with Ratchet remaining on Earth, Knock Out was the only medic on the planet.

In the end, after several days of questioning, and a further day of deliberation and heated debates with Arcee and Bumblebee, Ultra Magnus grudgingly issued Knock Out with a pardon and acceptance into Autobot ranks--on strict probation.

What this meant for Knock Out was that, while he was technically allowed to move about Cybertron freely, any time he wasn't in his quarters he had to be accompanied by a guard. At first he was only allowed out when there was a medical situation; Smokescreen or Bumblebee would escort him to the newly constructed medical centre, but the members of Team Prime had better things to do than babysit a former Decepticon. Eventually, however, ships carrying survivors and refugees who had scattered to the stars began to return to Cybertron, and there was finally enough of a work-force to go around.

What this meant for the newly-returned scout Velocity, was a shift every second day guarding the universe's most insufferable Autobot.

On this particular morning, he had decided he wanted to go for a drive on the Steelflats, outside of the city-in-progress.

"It's been far too long since I've gotten to stretch my legs, so to speak," Knock Out told her as they approached the edge of the city.

"Are you sure you're allowed out here?" she asked, scurrying after him. She was shorter than him by several feet so she had to jog to keep up, but the wheels on her shoulders and at her heels, and the streamlined build of her body, marked her out as someone who could go very, very fast in their alt-mode, so she had no fears of him running away and escaping.

"I'm allowed anywhere, so long as I have a guard. All of Cybertron is at my fingertips!" He gestured grandly at the wide expanse in front of them; flat metal ground almost as far as the eye could see.

"Well... ok, but I don't think we should go too far. Smokescreen told me there are Predacons haunting the Steelflats!"

Knock Out barked out a laugh. "Kid, there are barely any Predacons left. Only three or four. And they're all hiding out in the Manganese Mountains."

"Are you sure? Smokescreen said--"

"Smokescreen is an idiot. Half of what he says is ignorant misinformation, the other half is an intentional lie."

Velocity made an affronted noise. "You shouldn't say things like that! I happen to think Smokescreen is very nice and he would never intentionally mislead someone!"

But Knock Out didn't wasn't listening. He vaulted over the barrier that marked the edge of the construction zone and threw himself forwards into his alt-mode, and his tires screeched as the sped towards the distant mountains.

"Hey--Wait up!"

Velocity chased after him on foot for a few seconds before realising this was pointless and dropping forwards into her own alt-mode.

She tooted her horn a tiny bit smugly as she pulled up alongside him, a slick blue racing car with red and gold highlights easily keeping up with him.

"Up for a race, kid?" he asked, revving his engine.

\---

They had barely started their second lap of the Steelflats when Ultra Magnus spoiled the medic's fun.

"Velocity," the commander's voice came over her communication system, "Please bring Knock Out to the command centre. Main conference room."

"Yes sir!" she responded, slowing down and tumbling back out of her alt-mode. "Can I ask why?"

"I'll explain it when he gets here."

The comm cut out.

"Knock Out!" she shouted after him, since he didn't seem to have noticed her stop.

She saw his wing mirrors tilt towards her, noticing she'd stopped. He turned in a slow arc to pull up beside her then flipped neatly out of his alt-mode, scowling. "What is it? Medical emergency? Figures I can't have a day to myself."

"It's not an emergency. Ultra Magnus wants to talk to you."

"Too bad, I don't want to talk to him."

"It was an order, not a request."

"Well, he can shove his order up his--"

"Knock Out, please. I'll get in trouble if you don't show up."

"Like I care."

"You'll get in trouble. I know the terms of your probation! If the commander decides that disobeying this order is a breach of the agreement, you might end up in jail."

Knock Out's face twisted into a nasty sneer, but he turned back towards the city. "Fine."

\---

Knock Out fumed all the way to the command centre, and Velocity was smart enough to avoid talking to him. The doctor didn't bother with formalities as he stalked into the conference room. "What do you want?" he demanded.

Velocity trotted in behind him, waving nervously at her commanding officer, hoping fervently that he wouldn't hold her responsible for his lack of manners.

Ultra Magnus was sitting at the table, going over a small stack of datapads, but he stood up when the pair entered, frowning at the lack of formality. "Good morning, Knock Out, Velocity. Doctor, please have a seat."

"Sure." Knock Out slumped into a chair and immediately kicked his feet up on the table.

The Autobot commander stared at the feet pointedly, but was ignored. Eventually he gave up and settled back into his own chair. "I will be brief. A shuttle containing a small group of refugees returned last night. Among them is a young field medic named First Aid. He was training as a fully qualified medic before he left Cybertron. I want you to continue his training."

Velocity saw a brief flash of surprise cross the doctor's features before his usual apathetic smirk settled onto his face.

"Hmm... No. I have no interest in taking on a student."

The commander sighed. "Let me rephrase that slightly, Knock Out. I hereby _order_ you to train First Aid."

Knock Out finally took his feet off the table, leaning forward to glare with undisguised fury. "You can't order me around like that. You're already basically keeping me as a prisoner!"

"We are keeping you under observation. You agreed to these terms when we accepted you into Autobot ranks."

"I didn't exactly have a choice! It was that or join Starscream in a stasis cell somewhere!"

"Nevertheless, you agreed. As the Autobot commander, I have the right to assign you duties. You _will_ train First Aid."

Knock Out's fingers made a screeching noise as he dragged them across the metal surface of the table. He stood up to his full height, only slightly taller than Ultra Magnus was when sitting, and glared at him. Ultra Magnus stared right back, meeting the medic's eyes calmly and without a hint of concern.

Knock Out broke eye contact first. "Very well. As you command."

"Excellent. You will begin tomorrow. You are dismissed, for now."

The former Decepticon threw off a sarcastic salute and turned to leave.

"Ultra Magnus, Sir?" Velocity had watched the entire exchange awkwardly, standing off to the side, but now the spoke up just as Knock Out reached the door.

"Yes, Velocity? Is there a problem?"

"I... I was just wondering... um, could I train as a medic as well? Since Knock Out will have a student anyway?"

Ultra Magnus frowned. "You are a scout."

"I know, but I always wanted to be a medic."

"Well..."

Velocity sensed uncertainty, and rushed to argue her case. "I'm qualified as a guard, and he needs a guard anyway, right? So you can just assign me as a guard during lessons, so it won't cost anything in terms of resource allocation!"

Ultra Magnus drummed his fingers on the table for a few moments, thinking. "There's no harm in it, and it never hurts to have an extra medic. I'll send you the appropriate paperwork this afternoon. Fill it in and return it to me, and you can begin training tomorrow with First Aid."

Knock Out made a strangled noise of indignation. "Hey! Don't I get a say in this?"

"No more so than you did regarding First Aid's training," Ultra Magnus said, levelling a glare at the medic.

Velocity, on the other hand, suddenly felt a little ashamed for going over his head. "Please? I promise I won't be any trouble."

Knock Out glared at her furiously. "Training someone with no prior medical experience would take years. _Decades_. Absolutely not."

"I remind you that you have no choice," Ultra Magnus said, "My decision is final."

"I don't want to cause any trouble--"

"You are not causing trouble. Your request was reasonable. I am sure Knock Out does not wish to cause any trouble either, so your medical training shall commence tomorrow."

Knock Out actually snarled as he left the conference room, but he didn't raise further objections.

\---

Velocity buzzed the doorbell on Knock Out's room bright and early the next morning. "One minute!" the doctor shouted, then took about five minutes to emerge from the room while Velocity shifted from foot to foot outside his quarters.

At last he opened the door, and she hopped from foot to foot excitedly. "Let's go, let's go! We'll be late!"

" _I_ don't care."

Velocity chose to ignore his unpleasant demeanour and walked impatiently with him towards the medical centre, still practically vibrating with excitement.

There was a bulky red and white 'bot standing, fidgeting, outside of the medical centre. He was carrying a stack of datapads and looking around impatiently. He spotted them coming and rushed towards them.

"Are you Knock Out? I'm First Aid, it's good to meet you!"

Knock Out stared at the offered hand disdainfully until it was retracted. "Let's just get this over with, shall we?"

The little medic valiantly remained friendly in the face of Knock Out's frosty tone. "Oh, absolutely! I didn't want to go into the medical facility without your permission, so I haven't gotten to look around yet, do you think you could start with a tour?"

"What's to see? It's a one room medbay with a few storage closets and an operating theatre."

The massive doors slid open automatically  as the trio approached, and both First Aid and Velocity rushed forward excitedly.

"Wow! It's massive compared to the medbay on the shuttle!"

"And there's so much stuff! What does it all do?" Velocity picked up an object from a bench at random and turned it over in her hands.

" _That_ ," Knock Out hissed, carefully snatching it from her hands, "is a very delicate medical instrument which took me three weeks to build. Do _not_ touch _anything_ in here until I say you can."

The two students carefully backed away from the tables covered in nearly sorted equipment.

"Now, let's get on with it, shall we?"


	2. Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should mention that I'm writing this as practice for NaNoWriMo--so I'm aiming to write at least 1500-2000 words a day and get a chapter posted each night between now and November first, then there'll probably be radio silence for a month while I work on my NaNoWriMo story...
> 
> This chapter has a lot of dialogue. It's surprisingly hard to write a conversation involving four people without getting confusing!

Velocity trailed after Knock Out slowly while escorting him to the main hall for evening rations. Her head was swimming, and she was starting to develop a headache.

As much as she hated to be negative about anyone, she had to admit that the doctor wasn't a very good teacher. He had tossed a pair of medical textbooks at them, then started barrelling through the chapter explaining basic anatomy at great speed, expecting them to keep up. First Aid didn't seem to have any trouble; he already knew all the basic stuff.

Velocity, on the other hand, saw a lot of studying on her own time in her future.

“Come get me when you want to leave,” Velocity told him once they reached the main hall, “I’ll just be over there.” She pointed to a table where a couple of her friends were already sitting.

“Yes yes, I know the drill.”

She gladly left the doctor to consume his rations on his own at a table in the corner like he always did, and slumped down at the table her friends were occupying.

"How was the first day?" Nautica asked excitedly.

"My head is going to explode," Velocity answered.

"Sounds like a fun time." The other occupant of the table, Brainstorm, poked Velocity in the head a few times. "I think there's some cranial fluid leaking out of your ears."

"That's not anatomically possible," a new voice interjected.

Velocity lifted her head far enough to see that First Aid was standing beside their table, carrying his rations in one hand, a data pad in the other, and shuffling his feet anxiously.

"Can I join you?" he asked, "I don't really know anyone but the 'bots I landed with, and they're all on different shifts, now."

"Sure!" Nautica said, "It's always nice to meet new people!" She slid over to make room for him and he sat down clumsily, his limbs a little too bulky for a table sized for racecars and jets to sit at. "I'm Nautica, and this is Brainstorm and Velocity. What's your name?"

"I'm First Aid. I already know Velocity from training."

"Ah, Velocity's fellow torture-victim!" Brainstorm said excitedly, "Tell me! How are you faring against the good doctor?"

"You mean Knock Out? He, uh, he's very _intense_? I got the impression he doesn't really want to be there."

"Oh, he really doesn't," Velocity told him, "You should have heard the fuss he kicked up when Ultra Magnus ordered him to take on students. I thought the commander was going to toss him out the window when he started scratching the furniture!"

"Wow, you were on guard duty for that?" Nautica asked, " _Please_ tell me you recorded it!"

"Of course not! That would be rude!"

"Damn! We could have done a special screening..."

"Er, sorry, you're a guard? But you’re a medical student?" First Aid looked at Velocity, clearly confused.

"Well, sort of! I'm technically ranked as a scout, but there aren't enough of us left to be choosy, I guess. Anyway, the commander authorised me to switch to medic once I'm done training."

"Oh." First Aid looked thoughtful. Swapping to a new career wasn't unheard of, but it was rather rare, even before the war. Most 'bots seemed happy with the first roles they picked when they were young. "Wait... why does Ultra Magnus need a guard? He's the biggest person I've ever met!"

"Ha! You don't know?"

"Know what? Oh no, is he ill? Injured?"

"No no," Brainstorm said, "I think Ultra Magnus is actually indestructible. Velocity isn't the commander's guard, she's Knock Out's. You know, to make sure he doesn't turn on us and try to kill us all in our sleep."

First Aid looked alarmed, and a malicious grin plastered itself on Brainstorm's face as he leaned towards First Aid, who leaned back slightly.

"Didn't you hear? The _good doctor_ is a _Decepticon_. And not just that--he was the chief medical officer of Megatron's flagship!"

First Aid actually let out a small squeak. Even with a faceplace and visor hiding his face, it was easy to see that he was frightened.

"Primus, Brainstorm, don't be so dramatic!" Nautica threw a friendly arm around the field medic's shoulders. "Don't listen to him. None of us were around when the war ended, but from what I've heard, Knock Out defected to the Autobots and the Prime himself gave him a pardon because he was instrumental in saving the world from Unicron."

"He was pardoned under the Reintegration Act, dummy," Velocity corrected, "Now who's being dramatic?"

"All I'm saying is, he's an Autobot now. There's no need to worry! Ultra Magnus wouldn't have pardoned him if he thought he was a danger to anyone."

"Well, he didn't really have much choice, though. He's the only fully qualified doctor on the planet. Without him a common virus could wipe out the entire population."

" _Brainstorm_..." Nautica admonished.

"Hey, do you two think you could ask him some questions for me?" Brainstorm continued, ignoring Nautica, "Perceptor told me that I am not under any circumstances allowed to talk to Knock Out and he threatened all sorts of consequences if I disobey. Like, I'm pretty sure I'll get at minimum a thirty minute lecture about the ethics of utilising the results of experiments performed by war criminals."

"What... what kind of questions?" First Aid's voice sounded a little strangled, at this point.

"Well, I heard he did some experiments with dark energon..."

"Brainstorm!" Nautica half shouted, "Perceptor told you to stop looking into that stuff! You _know_ it's dangerous."

"I don't have to do what Perceptor says! He's not the captain of our ship any more, so he's not the boss of me."

"Now he's the chief science officer for the whole planet, so he's _definitely_ still the boss of you."

"So, did all three of you come here on the same ship?" First Aid asked, trying to change the subject before the looming argument broke out.

"We did," Velocity answered, "The _Conservation of Momentum_. It belongs to Perceptor. It was just us three and Perceptor onboard."

"Wow, that must have been lonely..."

"It was ok, we had each other, and if we ever got bored we could just set Brainstorm and Perceptor off on an argument. Hours of fun."

"When did you leave Cybertron?"

"Not long after we were created."

“We were under Perceptor's care when Kaon was overrun," Nautica elaborated, "When it started getting dangerous for civilians. He told the Prime that he refused to let us be endangered in the war when we hadn't even been alive when it started, and the Prime said he wouldn't force anyone to fight, gave him a ship, and sent us on our way."

"When did _you_ leave?" Brainstorm asked.

"A few hundred years after Kaon fell, so I ended up seeing some action." The field medic shuddered. "Nothing quite as awful as trying to patch up someone’s main fuel line while there are missiles exploding overhead. When the fighting reached Iacon, the Prime decided to send an archivist offworld with as much data as he could hold, to make sure some of our culture survived even if we didn't. So he sent a bunch of us along with the archivist to protect him, and I was the closest thing to a medic that could be spared, so I was sent along. There were thirteen of us onboard when we set out. We lost a couple over the centuries, but most of us got to see Cybertron again."

"Ultra Magnus must have been happy to have the archivist here. He tried to recover records from Iacon, but the whole place is a ruin."

"Yeah, the commander’s going to get him to upload all of his stored archives into the primary database. He reckons it’s going to take him months."

“It sounds like--”

Velocity was interrupted by an empty energon cube bouncing off the side of her head. “Hey!”

Knock Out was standing a few meters away, looking bored and irritated. “ _Hey_ yourself. Let’s go.”

The race car sighed and stood up, while Nautica quickly grabbed the suddenly wide-eyed Brainstorm and clamped a hand over his mouth to stop him from asking the doctor anything Perceptor wouldn’t approve of.

\---

"Goodnight," she said when they reached Knock Out's quarters, "I'll see you tomorrow."

"I look forward to it," the doctor said, sarcasm dripping from his words.

Velocity waited until the door clicked closed behind him and locked, then wandered back to her own quarters, clutching the data pad under her arm.

Unlike Knock Out, who got a room to himself because no one wanted to share with him, Velocity had a roommate sharing her quarters, just like everyone else. With all the new arrivals, there wasn't enough space for everyone to have a room to themselves, and building more housing was lower on Bulkhead's priorities than building a larger medical centre and repairing essential roadways within the city.

"I'm home..." she said as she palmed the door controls, half hoping her roommate wouldn't be here. It would certainly be easier to study if he was out.

No such luck. The second the door opened the sound of gunfire and shouting hit her, and she turned her hearing down quickly to avoid damaging her systems.

Smokescreen was sitting on the floor, hunched over in front of a tiny screen and holding an equally tiny controller in his hands. The noise emanated from the speakers in the screen.

The 'bot gave no indication that he'd heard her, which was entirely possible with how loud his game was, so she tapped him on the shoulder and was rewarded with a startled yelp.

"Ah! Velocity! When did you get back?" he shouted over the racket.

"Just now! Turn your game down!"

"What?"

"TURN YOUR GAME DOWN!"

"Oh, sorry!" He hit a button on the screen, and the noise stopped.

"Look, I need to get some studying done, do you think you could just give the game a miss tonight?"

"But I'm up to a good bit." Smokescreen gave her his best puppydog look. "Just five more minutes?"

"Ehhh... _fine_." Velocity knew that five minutes would turn into half an hour, but sooner or later he'd get bored and recharge, then she could study in peace.

"I got Raf to bring me a second controller," Smokescreen said, holding it out to her enticingly. "Do you want to help me stop the zombie apocalypse?"

Well, there went any hope of studying.

 


	3. Chapter Three

Now that the Vehicons were allowed to change their appearance they had begun to value their individuality a great deal, and protected their right to be different fiercely. Ultra Magnus had written formal reprimands for the participants of more than one scuffle between Vehicons accusing each other of 'copying'.

It came to a head when Smokescreen was put in medbay trying to stop a fight. The fight had started when a large flyer strode up to a much smaller jet and advised her that he liked the name she had given herself, and had decided that he was going to be using it from now on.

By the time Smokescreen arrived to intervene, the smaller jet had torn her much larger opponent's arm off and was beating him with it while ignoring his pleas for mercy. Smokescreen had tried to take the arm off her and calm her down, and gotten an eye clawed out for his trouble.

Ultra Magnus had been called.

Being much larger than everyone present, he simply lifted the small jet up by the armour plating on her back and shook her until she stopped screeching and struggling.

With his other arm, he pointed at an unlucky Vehicon who had been watching. "You. Take Smokescreen to the medical centre. And you two..."

He turned back to the jet he was holding off the ground in one hand, and the unlucky 'bot she'd been fighting. "What in the name of Solus do you two think you are doing? Do you realise that assaulting a fellow Autobot is a criminal offense?"

"He started it..." mumbled the smaller combatant.

Ultra Magnus sighed. "Would either of you care to simply tell me what happened? It will save me from checking if the security cameras are operating in this part of the complex yet."

"She just attacked me!" the injured flyer yelled.

"He tried to take my name!"

"...What?" Ultra Magnus set her down and frowned at her. "One cannot steal a name."

"That's what I told him!" the jet said, then quietly added "...while I was ripping his arm off."

"What is your name, then?"

The jet grinned. "Slipstream, sir! I came up with it myself."

Ultra Magnus sighed, and pointed to the injured Vehicon still sprawled on the ground. "You there. Did she have that name first?"

"...Yes," he admitted.

"Well then, I suggest you find another name. Clearly we cannot have more than one person with the same name."

"Yessir," he muttered.

"Good. Now, someone help him to the medical centre and make sure his arm is reattached. Slipstream, are you injured?"

"No sir."

"Excellent. You are on cleaning duties for the next seven days. Your revised schedule will be uploaded within an hour. Report to Bulkhead for assignments. Dismissed."

Slipstream looked outraged. "Are you serious? I wasn't the one who started this!"

"But you are the one who ripped someone's arm off and used it as a weapon. _Dismissed_."

The jet threw him a halfhearted salute before slouching out of the main hall.

Ultra Magnus frowned after her, and sighed again. He resisted the urge to go back to his quarters and let someone else deal with everything for the day, but only barely.

"Ultra Magnus? Sir?"

The commander looked down to find a small mining-class Vehicon standing nervously at his feet. "Yes? ...Do you have a name as well?" He found it safer to ask for a name, lately, than to use the serial numbers they had been given aboard the Nemesis, which had been noted on their personnel files--the ones he had dutifully memorised. The Vehicons were, evidently, protective of their newfound freedom to be called whatever they wished.

"Er, yes sir, I do. Um."

Ultra Magnus waited, but the small miner just trailed off and shuffled his feet.

"And your name is..?"

"Oh! Um. Ironfist, Sir."

Ultra Magnus glanced down at the miner's huge hands, which were unpainted, unlike the rest of him, which had been inexpertly painted in blue and yellow. Clearly not much imagination had gone into the name. "And how can I help you, Ironfist?"

"Well, I was just. I just thought..." The miner trailed off again.

"Be brief, please. I have duties to attend to."

Ironfist nodded apologetically, and words suddenly tumbled out of him in a rush. "I just thought maybe it would help if we could register our names? To avoid clashes? And so that our records have our proper names and not just our serial numbers, which none of us really like having, especially since Knock Out keeps using them even after we tell him our names when we have to go to medbay. But obviously we would need your permission to do that and we'd need someone who has access to the records to update them for us and as far as I know only you have access to change the records and I know you're busy but maybe if you have time at some point when things quiet down you could update our records maybe?"

Ultra Magnus waited patiently for the words to stop, then raised one hand to his chin thoughtfully. "The idea holds merit. It would be improper records keeping not to update your files. However, I do not have the time available for such a lengthy task.”

He paused for a moment, briefly considering the wisdom of what he was about to do, then sighed and continued. “I would need to delegate the work to someone else, who could be granted limited access to the database. Do you happen to know anyone who might be interested in a temporary assignment like that?"

As expected, the miner's visor lit up with an excited flash. "I am! I could do that!" His large hands waved excitedly as he spoke. "I would be so good at that! I already know most of our names and I can read and write properly as well!"

"You mention an ability to write as if it is unusual..?"

"Oh, well, you know, not all of us can. Breakdown taught some of us so we could help with monitor duty and stuff."

The Autobot commander rubbed a hand over his face tiredly. "You are not all literate?" He was going to have to arrange lessons. It was unacceptable for anyone under his command to have been denied a complete education, but a training schedule would set rebuilding efforts back considerably, not to mention cause him a great deal more work. There were many long nights in his future.

He realised that the miner had been speaking again.

"...figure we don't all need to have every skill, and anyway, it fosters cooperation or something. I can read stuff for the others and they can do stuff I can't, like fight, or reach things on the top shelf..."

"I see," the commander said. "Well, Ironfist, I must return to my work. I have some spare time at midday. Please report to my office at that time, and I will set up your access and a computer terminal to work from."

\---

Velocity collected Knock Out from his quarters and brought him to the medical centre, where two moderate injuries had been reported. She was always slightly awed at how much damage her kind could sustain while still only being considered 'moderately injured'. There was a Vehicon flyer carrying his own arm casually over one shoulder, and Smokescreen, looking sullen, with one eye completely missing and huge gashes in the metal of his face.

"My my my, have you been fighting?" Knock Out asked the pair of them, looking over their injuries almost gleefully.

"No! I tried to _stop_ a fight!"

"And I was attacked."

"Riiiiiight. Velocity, call First Aid and tell him to get in here. It's time for a practical lesson."

The medic prepared the centre for the minor surgery both 'bots would require, and Velocity retrieved replacement parts and equipment from the storage cupboards as Knock Out shouted a list at her. By the time First Aid appeared they were ready to go.

"Ah, my favourite student," Knock Out said, rubbing clawed hands together, "We have here a wonderful opportunity for a practical test."

First Aid spotted the Vehicon with the missing arm. "Reattaching a limb? I think I can manage, depending on how badly damaged the connectors are. I've done so once or twice before."

“Oh, nevermind then, it’d be boring boring. Velocity can do it.”

“What? Me?”

“Yes! Won’t that be fun?”

“Uh… I thought you were a scout…” the Vehicon said, with no small amount of trepidation.

“I’ve been training as a medic for a couple of months now.”

“Yeah, she has,” Smokescreen said from where he’d been told to sit and stay on the next medical table over, “All she does these days is study. You’ll be _fine_!”

Knock Out grinned. "It’s settled then. Velocity fixes R0-348 here, and First Aid will fix Smokescreen!”

"Whoa, hang on, doc," Smokescreen said, looking worried all of a sudden, "Fixing an eye is pretty tricky, isn’t it? Can't you just fix me up?"

"My students need to start somewhere, Smokescreen, wouldn't you say?" The medic suddenly leaned over Smokescreen, his red eyes narrowing to angry slits as he met the single remaining blue eye, "And would you not also say that if Ultra Magnus didn't want medical students learning to be medics, then perhaps he shouldn't have made me take on medical students in the first place?"

"Oh jeez."

“You’ll be _fine_ ,” the Vehicon said snidely.

\---

Velocity and First Aid sat together silently in the main hall after what Knock Out referred to as their first practical test. First Aid's visor was flaring erratically while the rest of him remained perfectly still, and Velocity was trembling from head to toe so violently that she was audibly rattling.

"Are you two... ok?" Nautica sat down opposite them and waved a hand back and forwards in front of First Aid's face.

"I am not at all ok," Velocity answered,"Not even a little bit."

"What happened?"

"Knock Out made us perform medical procedures today. On actual patients."

"And how did it go?"

"Awfully."

"She forgot to turn on R0-348's circuit dampeners before she started reattaching his arm and Knock Out didn't remind her. He called it a 'learning experience'. Then he _cackled_. I didn't think it was actually possible to cackle." First Aid lowered his chin to the table and wrapped his arms over his head.

"You should have heard R0-348 scream. I never want to hear that noise again." Velocity had a haunted look in her eyes.

"Uh, wow. That sounds... horrible. Uh. How did you do, First Aid?"

"Not... _too_ badly. I didn't mess up the eye replacement, but I'm not great at soldering yet. Smokescreen kind of looks like Frankenstein's Monster, now."

They had watched the movie a week ago in Bumblebee's theatre, and First Aid was glad he had something to compare Smokescreen's now-terrifying visage to.

“Wait, is Knock Out going to fix him up? He’s not going to make him keep the scars, is he?”

Velocity shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. He’s still pretty mad that Ultra Magnus is making him train us, and he’s taking it out on… pretty much everyone. I’d feel bad for him if he weren’t such a jerk about it.”

“Yeah,” First Aid added, “It’s been months. Why is he so against having students?”

“What’re we talking about?” Brainstorm asked as he dropped a cube of rations on the table and slid in beside Nautica. “Is it Smokescreen’s face? Have you seen it? It’s amazing. A real work of art.”

First Aid groaned and let his head sink back to the table.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just more world building in this chapter, along with introducing a new main character, Ironfist. Next chapter will have some actual plot, I swear.
> 
> I like the idea of the Vehicons branching out and becoming individuals rather than faceless drones now that they have the opportunity. So that's likely going to develop in the background of the story.


	4. Chapter Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I didn't upload a chapter yesterday. I got one written, but realised it really belonged a bit later in the story. This means that I'll have to upload two chapters tomorrow! This chapter is kind of rushed, though, so sorry if it's a bit less polished. I didn't have a lot of time today.

“Have you _seen_ my _face_?”

Smokescreen leaned across the desk, pointing at his face with both hands for emphasis, and Ultra Magnus leaned back slightly, trying to preserve his personal space.

“I like a good prank as much as the next ‘bot,” Smokescreen continued, “But this is getting ridiculous! I’ve asked him three times to fix this up and he keeps just saying he’s too busy training his students! Even if neither of them are there!”

“Then I will send him a formal reprimand and order him to fix your face,” Ultra Magnus said, leaning back as far as his chair would allow as Smokescreen encroached further upon his personal space.

Smokescreen recoiled away from the desk, much to Ultra Magnus’ relief.

“What? Are you _insane_? That’ll make things _worse_!”

Ultra Magnus’ eyebrows snapped together. “Watch your tone, soldier.”

The ‘bot backed off a bit, offering an apologetic half-grin. “Sorry. But that’s not a good idea. It really will just make him worse.”

“For an action such as this, a written reprimand is the correct action to take, as per the Autobot code, section--”

“Yeah, but Knock Out’s an arrogant afthole. He’s mad because you’re bossing him around, and bossing him around more isn’t going to fix things. You can’t just tell him to do stuff, you’ve gotta _manipulate_ him.”

“I do not approve of taking a dishonest approach.”

“It’s the only thing that will work. _Trust_ me on this.”

With Smokescreen back on the far side of the desk where he belonged, Ultra Magnus leaned forwards again and folded his hands on the table. “Tell me what you would suggest, then.”

\---

Velocity hit the buzzer on Knock Out’s door, and waited.

Eventually the door hissed open. “What do you want? Is there a medical emergency you can’t deal with on your own?”

“Er, no. Everything’s fine.” Velocity ignored the hostility in the medic’s tone. She’d gotten used to it. “Ultra Magnus wants to see you.”

“Ugh, not a chance. I’m going back to sleep. Tell him he needs more reasonable office hours. Not all of us think getting up with the dawn is fun.”

The door hissed closed in Velocity’s face.

She sighed, and hit the buzzer again. It wasn’t unusual for it to take her several minutes of arguing and persuading to get him to leave his room. He seemed to take it as a point of pride never to turn up anywhere on time unless there was a medical emergency to get to.

“Know Out, come on,” she yelled through the door, “You can go back to recharging after, you don’t have anything else scheduled for the day!”

Silence.

“Don’t make me use the override code for your door! Ultra Magnus gave it to me, you know!” Not _actually_ true, but she doubted he’d call her bluff when it came to risking his privacy.

The medic offered up a few token threats about what would happen if she dared, but eventually he came out.

“Let’s get this over with.”

\---

“Ah. Knock Out. Thank you for coming. You are right on time.”

Velocity had simply told him the meeting was ten minutes earlier than it really was. Knock Out shot her a glare.

“Despite my best efforts.” Knock Out flopped down in the chair opposite the commander and kicked his feet up onto the desk. Ultra Magnus managed to let it pass without comment, but made a mental note to clean his desk later.

“So, why am I here, o commander?”

“To fill out some paperwork.”

“Seriously? You dragged me up here at this hour of the morning to fill out some paperwork? Couldn’t you just send it to me?”

“No. This must be done in person. Here.” Ultra Magnus slid a datapad across the desk. “Please read it in full before deciding whether or not to sign it.”

“Fine, fine. Whatever.” The doctor picked up the datapad and started skimming across the dense, neat writing.

His eyes slowly widened as he read, and he took his feet off the desk to lean forwards, squinting closer at the words, scrolling through the document almost frantically.

“Is this for real?” he asked finally. “It’s not some kind of stupid joke?”

Ultra Magnus frowned. “Of course not. I am not prone to joking, as you may be aware.”

“What’s it say?” Velocity asked, leaning over Knock Out’s shoulder.

“He’s making me the chief medical officer of Cybertron.”

“In civilian matters,” Ultra Magnus clarified. “Ratchet still outranks you in military matters.”

“Yes, yes. Details.” Knock Out waved a hand dismissively. “Still, this is quite the promotion, considering I’m still under house arrest.”

“Ah, that is the other matter we have to discuss today. I am ending your probationary period. You are still forbidden from restricted areas such as military command centres and weapons storage facilities without an escort, but aside from that you are welcome to move about as you wish, without a guard. I have altered your clearance already. If you choose to, you may now wear an Autobot badge.”

“Oh, Primus, no, those things look awful.”

Velocity thought she saw one of the commander’s eyes twitch, but he said nothing.

A smug grin planted itself on Knock Out’s face. “So! I’m a free person, now, and the chief medical officer--”

“--in civilian matters--”

“--of Cybertron. Dare I ask what I did to deserve this honour? Aside from being the best and only fully trained medic on the planet?”

Ultra Magnus sighed and steepled his fingers in front of him on the desk. “The command staff and I discussed the matter recently. You’ve shown no inclination to cause harm to the Autobot cause in any way, which is why we have ended your probationary period. On top of that, you have proven to be an exceptional medic, and, from what I hear, your students are progressing well. I understand they have recently begun performing medical procedures themselves, under your guidance?”

“Ha! That’s true. Isn’t it, Velocity?”

Now Velocity felt her own eye twitching. She was having trouble believing that the whole story hadn’t somehow filtered its way up to the commander, especially with the way Smokescreen was carrying on. “That is technically true, yes.”

“Excellent. And I am pleased to hear you are doing well in your studies, Velocity.”

“Thank you, sir. I, uh. I have a good teacher.”

The smug grin on Knock Out’s face got wider. “Well, sir, is there anything else?”

“No. All that is left is to sign the documents.”

Knock Out scanned his signature onto the bottom of the document and slid the datapad back across the desk at the commander, who caught it and added his own signature.

“Well then! I’m going back to sleep. Have a good day, commander!” The doctor pushed himself out of his chair and sauntered towards the door.

“Ah, a moment, Knock Out. There is one last thing.”

Knock Out’s eyes narrowed as he turned back. “So, there _is_ a catch. Well, out with it then.”

“Please be so kind as to repair Smokescreen’s face. He is scaring the Vehicons.”

Velocity couldn’t help it. She burst out laughing.

It was almost worth the glare that Ultra Magnus levelled at her.

\---

The smug, self-important grin didn’t leave Knock Out’s face all the way to the medbay. He had decided, in a fit of benevolence, to fix Smokescreen’s face that morning, rather than making him wait.

Halfway there, Velocity had realised she didn’t really need to be following him around any more, and in fact could take the morning off, since she wasn’t scheduled for any duties until the afternoon.

"Don't you have somewhere else to be?" Knock Out asked her a little scathingly as he rattled around the medbay collecting the items he would need to fix Smokescreen.

"Not really. Besides, I kind of want to watch."

"Ha! Why not? It'll be a good demonstration of how to fix a wound without causing scarring."

\---

"Sir?"

Ultra Magnus looked up from the report he was reading on the progress of building the new hospital. "Yes, Ironfist? Do you need help with something?"

"No, sir. Just letting you know I finished updating everyone's names. Well, there are a few people who haven't chosen names yet, but I got everyone who has. Did you know R0-348 chose a name? One he came up with himself, this time. Thundercracker. I think it suits him. Anyway, just letting you know."

"Ah, thank you. Good work."

"...I also updated everyone's file photo and preferred pronouns. While I was there. Is that ok? I should have asked first, but it seemed like a good idea and I didn't want to bother you."

Ultra Magnus raised his eyebrows. "You did all that in two days? All three hundred and eighty six Vehicons?"

"Well, three hundred and seventy four. I didn't make any changes to the files of people who haven't chosen a name yet. Is there anything more else I need to do before I report back to my usual job? Apparently we're starting to put the roof on the hospital soon."

"Ah... I do have something to discuss with you, in fact."

\---

Guarding the spacebridge was a boring and thankless job, but someone had to do it. Specifically, someone from command staff, because Ultra Magnus refused to trust anyone who used to be a Decepticon with the means to travel instantly anywhere in the universe.

Today, it was Arcee's turn. She always struggled to get through the full twenty hour shift.

She had come prepared, with a datapad full of old shows and movies, and she was halfway through watching her favourite action film for the third time in a row when the spacebridge activated.

Protocol dictated that in the event of an unscheduled spacebridge activation, she was to immediately alert the commander, lock down the spacebridge control room, and treat anything that came through as hostile until proven otherwise.

Arcee didn’t hesitate. She dropped the datapad, slammed her fist down on the emergency lockdown button, aimed both blasters at the rapidly forming portal, and sent a high priority alert to Ultra Magnus.

“Don’t shoot it’s just us!” the figure who emerged from the portal immediately threw his hands up, and was soon joined by two more small shapes in bulky space suits.

“Jack?” Arcee lowered her blasters, forming them back into hands. “What are you doing here? You’re not scheduled for another two weeks.”

The tallest figure smiled at her sheepishly through the thick glass visor protecting his face. “Sorry, but we’ve got kind of a situation developing on Earth. We could really use some Autobot help.”

The spacebridge portal closed behind the three humans, leaving the room in relative darkness. “What kind of situation? Not that it isn’t good to see you three again, but you know how much the commander hates broken schedules.”

“Well, we’re not certain,” Rafael said, “we don’t have any conclusive evidence of this, but we think that perhaps--”

“Soundwave escaped the shadow zone!” Miko blurted out, bouncing up and down on the spot and sounding entirely too excited about this potential danger.

Arcee’s eyes cycled wide. “If that’s true…” She shook her head disbelievingly, “Come on, we need to speak to Ultra Magnus _right now_.”

She typed the code into the spacebridge control panel which would lift the emergency lockdown, while at the same time pinging Bumblebee over her comms system. “Bee, I need you to take over spacebridge duty for a while. Got some visitors who need to speak to the commander.”

“ _Who is it?_ ” came the curious reply.

“Jack, Raf, and Miko.”

“ _Oh! I’ll be right there!_ ”

And sure enough, a few moments later they heard engines roaring as the black and yellow sports car tore through the wide hallways.

“Raf!” He tumbled out of his alt-mode and stopped just in front of the three humans. “Good to see you!”

The youngest of the three, now old enough to be in college, hopped into Bumblebee’s hand with easy familiarity so that the ‘bot could lift him up to eye level.

“Hey, we’ll leave you two to talk,” Miko shouted at them, “We gotta talk to the boss!”

\---

When Arcee and the two humans entered the small records room which led to Ultra Magnus’ office there was a small, worried looking Vehicon sitting at a desk which she was sure hadn’t been there yesterday, typing away on a console which was almost large enough to hide him from sight entirely.

“Er, he’s not there,” the small Vehicon said when Arcee went to knock on the office door. “He went to check on a problem at one of the building sites.”

“Oh. Thank you.”

The little Vehicon stared at her nervously for a while, then seemed to realise he’d forgotten something. “Do you want me to take a message?” he asked hurriedly.

“No thank you. This is urgent, I’ll go find him.”

“Oh, ok then. Sorry. I mean thank you. I mean have a good day?”

Arcee turned to leave, but her curiosity got the better of her. “Who are you, exactly?”

The Vehicon looked startled, as if he hadn’t been expecting to be asked such a difficult question. “My name’s Ironfist, sir.”

“And what are you doing here?”

“Sorting! I finished updating all the records for the other Vehicons and the commander asked me to stay here and start sorting the data from the old Iacon Archives, the stuff that Rewind is uploading into the database, so I’m working on that, but also people keep coming in to speak to him, so I’ve been taking messages as well.”

“So you’re Mags’ secretary?” Miko asked.

Ironfist jumped at the new voice, and half-stood on his chair to see over the desk. Small as he was compared to Arcee, he was still twice the height of the two humans. “Hello. Are you visiting? You’re from Earth, right? Er, just so you know, I don’t think the commander likes being called ‘Mags’.”

“Oh, we _know_. Come _on_ Miko.” Jack tugged on her arm, “We’re in a huge hurry, remember?”


	5. Chapter Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay. This chapter took SO LONG to write. I just couldn't get it to work. Which was a pain, because I've already got the next one and a half chapters written, so the next one will go up in about ten minutes or so.
> 
> Now that it's November I'll just try to update this with a new chapter once or twice a week, but can't guarantee I'll always have the time to work on it.

"Don't get into any trouble while I'm gone," Perceptor said.

He was standing in one corner of the spacebridge room with the three young Autobots who had, up until recently, been under his sole charge. Other clumps of people were scattered around the room, saying goodbye to the team Arcee's was leading to Earth; Bumblebee, Smokescreen, Wheeljack, Perceptor, and Jazz, an Autobot who had returned on the same ship as First Aid and the archivist.

"We'll be good!" Brainstorm said dutifully, holding one hand up as though he were making a vow.

Perceptor gave him a flat look. "Try not to break anything I can't fix when I get back."

"Or anything I can't fix before he gets back so that he's none the wiser," Nautica added, earning her own disapproving stare.

"Alright, people, let's move out!" Arcee shouted, as the spacebridge portal spiralled into existance.

Perceptor slung his sniper rifle over his shoulder. "Velocity, please make sure they're both still alive when I get back."

"Will do, boss."

"And Brainstorm, stay out of my lab. I mean it. It's dangerous in there."

"Ugh, fine. Whatever. I didn't want to go in there anyway."

"And no creating anything that explodes."

"Ok, ok."

"And no talking to that Decepticon medic, understood?"

"'Don't do anything fun', got it."

"Good." He sighed resignedly, waving as he turned to leave. "Stay safe while I'm away!" he called over his shoulder.

\---

"The direction you're walking seems to be remarkably similar to the direction you'd need to travel if you were heading for medbay," Nautica said to Brainstorm. She and Velocity were walking on either side of him as he strode through the corridors of the main complex.

"Is it? I hadn't noticed. So easy to get lost in this building don't you think?"

"Not even a little bit."

"Perceptor told you _not_ to talk to Knock Out," Velocity said.

"Who says I'm going to talk to him? Maybe I'm just going to... to look."

"At Knock Out?"

"At the medbay! It's important to know what sort of medical facilities we have here."

"Especially with how often your experiments blow up."

"They're _meant_ to! I almost _never_ blow up something that isn't supposed to. Jeez."

"Look, are you seriously going to disobey Perceptor?" Velocity frowned, worried, "I mean, Knock Out isn't as bad as he thinks, but he's just trying to keep you from getting yourself into trouble."

"It's not like I'm going to spontaneously turn into a Decepticon just from asking some questions. Leave me alone if you're going to be such a killjoy."

"No way. Perceptor told me to keep an eye on you. Besides, I'm headed to medbay anyway, class is starting soon."

\---

Ironfist frowned at the screen of the computer console he’d been given to work at. Rewind was taking a break from uploading files because he was feeling unwell, so Ironfist had nothing to do. He had noted and catalogued every file uploaded so far, and carefully sorting them into folders and adding them to a directory so they could be searched for by name or subject.

He looked at the clock on the screen, just in case it showed a different time to his internal chronometer. No such luck. There were still three and a half hours left in his shift. Ultra Magnus was out, so he couldn’t ask for more work to do.

He sighed and scrolled through the completed directory again, checking for mistakes, then paused as one caught his eye:

" _Unit Report Log: 'Wreckers' Taskforce_."

Ironfist glanced around nervously, then double clicked on the file, then selected the document labelled " _0001_ ".

He started reading.

\---

Ratchet was waiting at the far end of the spacebridge, with Agent Fowler standing on the platform above it which allowed him to be at eye level with their Cybertronian guests.

As they traded greetings, Arcee's noticed that Fowler's hair was greying, which she understood to be a sign that he was approaching his species' upper age limit. She didn’t like the reminder how how little time humans lived for; it made her think about how in another six or seven decades and she’d lose Jack and the other kids. It certainly wasn’t something she wanted to dwell on.

“Well, let’s show you what we’ve got,” Fowler said, once the minimum required pleasantries were out of the way, “Ratchet? Show ‘em the thingymajig.”

Ratchet grumbled something under his breath and turned to the bank of large screens that made up his workstation, as everyone gathered around to get a look.

“This is a primitive listening device that was found near to a military communications post. It was recording all traffic which passed through the outpost.”

A series of photos and a blueprint appeared on the screen.

“The design looks Cybertronian in origin,” Perceptor said almost immediately, “But the materials it’s made out of…”

“Scrap,” Ratchet said, “Bits and pieces scavenged from junk yards here on Earth.”

“So why do you think this is Soundwave’s doing?” Arcee asked, “Isn’t it more likely that it’s something like MECH resurfacing, copying stolen equipment?”

“The design is primitive,” Ratchet explained, “Neither Autobots nor Decepticons have used this style of communications equipment for over a hundred thousand years. Which means there was no such Cybertronian device on Earth to be copied.

“...which means that only a Cybertronian communications expert could have built that device,” Perceptor reasoned.

“Or that a Cybertronian supplied the designs, at the very least. I went through the coding, and I’d appreciate it if you took a second look, Perceptor, but my initial impression is that the coding, despite being in Cybertronian, has a somewhat human flavour to it.”

Agent Fowler cleared his throat. “Since the only known Cybertronian on Earth is Ratchet, and we haven’t picked up any sign of other alien life entering our atmosphere, our current theory is that Soundwave has found a way of communicating from the shadow zone and is giving someone instructions.”

Arcee shook her head. “Even so, it’s a fairly big leap to assume Soundwave is behind this. Isn’t it more likely that there’s another Cybertronian on Earth and we just haven’t found them?”

“We know that it’s possible to send signals to and from the shadowzone,” Fowler said, “That’s how you found the kids that one time. Frankly, we should have realised this was a possibility earlier.”

“I assume he’s trying to escape,” Smokescreen said.

“Good guess,” Ratchet said, rolling his eyes.

“So what are we going to do about it?” Arcee asked.

“Well, our own experts haven’t had any luck, but we were hoping a Cybertronian expert could help us track down whoever actually built the listening device. Then, they can be convinced to share what they know about Soundwave.”

“Which is why you’re here, Perceptor. I’ll show you the device, and what I’ve learned so far about the coding.” Ratchet gestured for the scientist to follow him out of the main room. “And the rest of you--stay ready to mobilise. The second we find something, you’re heading out.”

\--

“Are there more of you today? I swear I only had two students yesterday.” Knock Out stood in the medbay door, eyeballing the two newcomers, who seemed passingly familiar.

“Oh no, we’re not students,” said the purple and yellow one. “I’m Nautica, this is Brainstorm.”

“Are you injured? Because First Aid could use more practice at welding...”

“ _Definitely_ not.”

“Well, shoo then. Out!”

“Right, right, we were just leaving.” The purple one grabbed the small blue ‘bot--a jet by the looks of the wings--by the arm and tried to tug him towards the exit, but he didn’t budge.

“Wait, wait, just one question!” the blue jet protested.

“ _Brainstorm_..!”

“Just one!”

“No, let’s go!”

Knock Out raised one eyebrow at the pair of them, looking slightly bemused. “What’s this important question you’re so eager to ask?”

Brainstorm opened his mouth to speak, but didn’t say anything, suddenly paralysed by indecision. “Uh…”

Velocity sniggered behind her hand.

“Well? I have students to teach. You have ten seconds to ask your question and get out before I turn on the security system.”

“Um! Do you-- did you-- I just wanted to ask-- um--”

“Five seconds,” Knock Out said, his hand hovering near to the security system controls.

“ _Do you want to come to movie night?_ ” Brainstorm almost shouted in a rush.

“...excuse me?”

“Yeah! We have a movie night every week! This week we’re watching something called _Pacific Rim_ which Miko said is really cool, and anyway, you’re like the only person on all of Cybertron who’s never been to one, so you should come!”

Knock Out glanced at Velocity and First Aid to check for any sign that this was a prank of some sort.

Velocity shrugged, looking confused herself. “It’s true, next one’s tonight. Open invite, so everyone is welcome. We thought you already knew about it and just didn’t want to go…”

“I’ll… think about it. Now get out, your ten seconds were up thirty seconds ago.”

“Right, right, so that’s what we came to ask, just wanted to make sure everyone was included, bye!” The jet practically ran out of the room, with Nautica following him.

\---

“What the hell was _that_?” Nautica asked the second they were out of hearing range.

“I panicked, ok! I couldn’t decide what to ask and I figured if he comes to movie night I can ask him more stuff!”

“Wow, I haven’t seen you so star struck since you first met Perceptor.”

“Shhhhut up! I am _not_ star struck and I _certainly_ don’t care what _Perceptor_ thinks.”

“ _Sure_ you don’t.”

“I don’t!”

“It’s too late, we all saw you freeze up.”

“You are the _worst_ friend!”

“And you’re just the worst.”

Brainstorm shoved her, and she shoved him back.

They bickered all the way back to the main hall.

\---

“Ultra Magnus? Sir?”

Ultra Magnus looked up from his datapad, then looked back down a little to adjust for Ironfist’s lack of height. “Yes?”

“I was wondering… you know those old military reports in the archives?”

“I know of them, yes.”

“Well, are they classified? I mean, is it alright to read them?”

“They are not classified. With the end of the war, all military records are declassified. So yes, it is alright to read them.”

“Oh, good.”

“Why do you ask? I can’t imagine them being all that useful any more.”

“I _maybe_ already started reading them.”

“...I see.”

“But that’s ok, right? Because they’re declassified.”

“If you had to ask me then you were clearly not aware they were declassified.”

Ironfist shrunk down in his chair, trying to hide behind his computer. “Sorry.”

Ultra Magnus sighed. “And why were you reading them? Your shift only just started, surely you have filing to do?”

“I, um, finished cataloging everything Rewind had uploaded so far yesterday. There wasn’t really anything else to do, and this is the first time you’ve been into your office since then, so I couldn’t ask for a new task, and I didn’t want to start working on anything without permission, so I just sort of started reading one of the files at random, and anyway, I think it was really interesting…”

“Ah. Perhaps you need a different task for now, until Rewind feels better and can upload more data.”

Ironfist scuffed the floor with one outsized foot. “Yes please.”

“How about monitor duty? With half of the command staff on Earth, I’ve asked Bulkhead to take over Bumblebee’s shifts, but it would be more useful to have him focusing on the rebuild.”

Ironfist brightened up. He had expected a punishment duty for reading the reports without asking, but monitor duty had always sounded like fun to him. Hours and hours of monitoring inbound information and checking security cameras and alarm systems over and over, having to constantly watch for minute changes that could indicate a problem… not to mention that being given access to the monitor room implied a certain amount of trust was being placed in him by the commander.

“Yes sir! Thank you sir!”

 


	6. Chapter Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which more plot and more characters are introduced.

Prowl woke up. It was the most difficult thing he had ever done.

His internal chronometer had stopped working properly a long time ago, but he knew that by the time it had broken it had already taken him at least two and a half centuries to write a code in his head which would counteract the medical stasis command code which was being used to keep him unconscious between experiments.

It hadn't made things easier that the only opportunity he got to work on his code was during those experiments, when the good doctor and his scuttling assistant would wake them up and ask them questions while poking and prodding at them, inflicting pain on them one at a time to test their bond with the others.

He had finally finished it a while ago, and then waited patiently for an opportunity to use it.

His chance came when the doctor told him, somewhat gleefully, that he'd be leaving for some time to check if the rumours of Cybertron's rejuvenation were true. "Be good!" the doctor had told him, just before uploading the stasis protocol which would normally put Prowl into a deep sleep until the doctor returned.

After what felt like enough time, he activated his code and felt himself jolted awake painfully.

The first thing he did was listen. There was the quiet hum of the medical equipment surrounding him, a steady beeping from a monitor, and the distant roar of the climate controllers which kept the base from freezing over.

He dared to power up his eyes and look around. Nothing but ancient metal and chipped stone walls.

Safe, relatively. He turned his attention to the next problem: escaping his restraints.

This proved to be easier than he had expected. The good doctor, it seemed, underestimated him, or perhaps simply never expected anyone to be able to overcome his highest clearance medical protocols.

All Prowl had to do was detach the joints in his wrists then pull at the restraints until his hands popped off. Exceedingly painful, but he was free. It took him much longer to fumble his hands back on using his feet and the wall to prop the hands up, sitting awkwardly on the ground. He found himself feeling relieved that his fellow experiments were kept in different rooms so they couldn't see his inelegant escape, and shook his head angrily. He should not care what those miscreants thought.

His left hand finally clicked back into place, and his right hand was much easier to restore. He flexed his fingers a few times, testing the connection. Still sore, but working acceptably.

The door was not an obstacle. Wasn't even locked. Turn the handle, walk out.

There were security cameras in the halls and in every room, but Prowl had long since come to the conclusion that the only occupants in the base aside from the experiments were the doctor and his assistant. They would be able to watch his escape, but by that time he would be long gone, on his way back to Cybertron himself. If the Autobots had really won, he would be safe there. Hopefully there would be enough scientists or medics remaining to fix what the doctor had done to him.

As it turned out, the only major obstacle to his escape came from within. As he approached the bay where he hoped the old, broken down shuttle he'd arrived on would still be, he started feeling a hollowness inside his chest. It got worse as he left the medical wing. He paused as he reached the entrance to the shuttle bay, standing in the doorway. The hollowness had turned into pain, and he had trouble forcing himself to keep going, knowing that it would get worse. He felt like his spark was being crushed.

He snarled, punching the door frame. He knew what was wrong with him, and he hated it. His shuttle was right there, a hundred meters from him, and he knew that if he got on it and flew away it would kill him. He turned back towards the medical wing, vowing to himself that the doctor would die an extremely unpleasant death for this. The pain in his chest subsided as he walked.

The door to the room he had exited was marked with a red "6". He passed it, heading for door five. He kicked it open with far more force than was necessary, and found a purple and green 'con watching him from the medical table he was strapped to.

"Hi, Prowl. We thought you might actually try to leave without us for a while there!"

"...Bonecrusher. I'm going to let you out. We're going to get the others, we're going to get on a shuttle, we're going to fly back to Cybertron, and you are going to shut up and do as you're told, and when we get home, you will be tried and imprisoned for your crimes, understood?"

"Yeah, sure Prowl, whatever you say."

This close to the Constructicon, Prowl could almost feel his sincerity through the unwanted bond he shared with all five of them. He could tell that Bonecrusher would follow his orders, but he also knew that Bonecrusher firmly believed Prowl would never hand them over to an Autobot court. Well, he was in for a surprise, wasn't he?

Prowl found the controls for the restraints holding the 'con down, and they slid back into the medical table.

"Now. We have some time before the doctor returns, but we should hurry all the same."

As Bonecrusher climbed stiffly down from the table and shook out his long-disused limbs, Prowl watched him with narrowed eyes. "By the way, Bonecrusher... how is it that you were already awake when I came in? Did the doctor not put you into stasis as he usually does?"

"Oh. Naw, he sent his assistant to do it. Little traitor must be an even worse medic than I thought, because I woke up after a day or two."

"Is that so?"

"Yeah. Hook and Long Haul are awake as well, I can tell. The others are still asleep, though."

"Well, that _is_ interesting. In that case, you free those two while I wake up Scavenger and Mixmaster. Off you go."

"Sure thing, Prowl."

The corner of Prowl's mouth twisted downwards with disgust at Bonecrusher's eagerness to obey. Not only were the five of them Decepticons, they were practically mindless. From what Prowl had overheard of the doctor's conversations with his assistant, it seemed that when the Constructicon's leader, Scrapper, hadn't survived the first round of experiments, they'd fallen apart (perhaps literally; the conversation fragment was unclear), and the doctor had decided he needed to integrate a new leader.

That was where Prowl had come in. He had already been a captive of the doctor's for several years at the time, having figured out the doctor's secret just a little too late to escape.

The first step the doctor had taken had been to completely rebuild Prowl's body, changing him so that he no longer turned into a sturdy patrol vehicle. Prowl remembered the confusion he felt at the time, when the doctor had first made him transform to test his new alt-mode.

Because why would anyone want to turn into a giant head?

Of course, since then it had all become painfully clear.

It took Prowl only a few hours to upload his anti-stasis code into Scavenger and Mixmaster's systems to wake them up as well, and then the doctor's six victims--five Decepticons and one Autobot--set about fixing up Prowl's old shuttle.

He would never admit it to anyone but himself, but having the help of five skilled engineers and mechanics made the work a great deal quicker and easier, and by the end of the day (which was eighty-four hours long on this freezing planet) the escapees were ready to leave.

It was a tight fit in the shuttle, considering that it was intended to carry two law enforcement officers and one or two prisoners. The Constructicons had played some incomprehensible game with seemingly arbitrary rules to decide who would get the second crew-quarters (Prowl, for course, got to keep his own quarters with no discussion) and who would have to sleep in the cramped cells at the back of the shuttle.

"How in the name of Primus does a sheet of processed plant matter destroy a stone?" he asked Mixmaster, as the game concluded with Hook in the second crew quarters and everyone else sleeping on the floor in the cells.

The 'con shrugged, a little helplessly. "I didn't make the rules up, boss. I just lose by them."

Prowl sighed and began the start up sequence. It was going to be a long flight home.

\---

"Ultra Magnus, sir, sorry to wake you, but there's a new ship incoming! We just caught it on sensors at the far edge of the solar system! It should be here within a few hours."

The communication from the monitor room, marked as urgent, brought the commander out of his rest cycle. "Is it broadcasting identification?"

"Yes sir, it's flagged as Autobot, but I don't recognise the name. From the signature, they might be a medic? Or a researcher? I've been looking through those old records you asked me to catalogue and it turns out that everyone who was given an identification number before the fall of Simanzi actually had their details hidden in the code. It's fascinating, actually. They would translate their name, rank, and specialty into Old Cybertronian, then use an algorithm to change it into a number. That way any Autobot with a high enough clearance to know the key could tell who and what someone was just by hearing their ID code..."

Magnus rubbed his hands over his face. "I know how the ID code worked, Ironfist, I helped design it. What is their _name_?"

"Oh, right. It says his name is Pharma."


	7. Chapter Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is full of:  
> -Dialogue.  
> -Lies.  
> -Probably spelling errors because I barely proofread it.

Ultra Magnus peered over Ironfist’s shoulder at the bank of monitors, his engines rumbling unhappily. “That is definitely Pharma’s ID tag.”

“You sound worried. Do you know him? What’s wrong? Why are you worried?”

"I did know him. But Pharma was reported killed when the transport ship he was on was shot down in a Decepticon ambush almost four hundred years ago, so there is a chance that this new arrival is not who he claims to be. Please issue a yellow alert to all military personnel, just to be safe."

Ironfist  typed a few quick commands into the console and Ultra Magnus felt the alert ping through his systems, just as all other military personnel in the complex would, letting them know there was a potential situation and they should be prepared to mobilise if necessary.

"You've learned the monitor systems quickly," he said, "I'm impressed."

Ironfist hunched over with embarrassment and mumbled something.

\---

Ultra Magnus was pleased to find that his fears were unfounded. Early in the morning, the inbound shuttle set down on the landing pad a little unsteadily, and two Autobots in medic colours disembarked.

The first one was unmistakable, though his once flashy paint job was scuffed and faded.

"Ultra Magnus! It's good to see your face again, my friend."

Magnus strode forward, motioning the line of guards which had met the shuttle to stand down. "And I am pleased to see that the report of your death was inaccurate."

"Only exaggerated a little, to be fair--my ship was shot down over a little ball of ice called Delphi. I spent the last few centuries trying to repair its only shuttle. I had to learn mechanical engineering and physics first, which slowed me down a little." Pharma grinned easily.

"I'll ask for a full report later. For now I'm sure you would prefer to get something to eat and take some time to rest. May I ask who your friend is?"

"Ah... this is Ambulon." Pharma beckoned to the second medic, who was hovering awkwardly at the base of the shuttle's ramp. "The last few centuries have not been kind to him," Pharma added quietly as the medic approached. "Ambulon, this is Ultra Magnus. He's Optimus Prime's second in command."

Ambulon gave a polite but clumsy salute.

"Ah... as a matter of fact, Pharma, I am afraid I have some bad news for you. I am now the leader of Cybertron's military. Optimus is... well, he gave his life to end the war for good."

"Oh." Pharma looked away, and Ultra Magnus stood awkwardly beside him on the landing pad while the medic composed himself.

"I suppose losses are inevitable in war, but I never expected..." the medic shook his head and sighed. "You mentioned food and rest?"

"Of course. Please follow me."

\---

After getting the two medics a generous ration of energon, Ultra Magnus led Pharma into the records room outside his office while Ambulon stayed in the main hall, working his way through a second ration.

"This is Ironfist. He will locate quarters for you and Ambulon and tell you everything you need to know about the city. He can answer any other questions you have, as well."

Pharma looked where Ultra Magnus had gestured. There was a red visored face just visible beyond a normal-sized computer screen, which looked massive next to the impressively small Autobot.

"Ah. Hello down there."

An overly large hand appeared above the screen and waved. "Hi. I mean, hello sir."

"Ironfist, Pharma should more correctly be referred to as 'doctor'."

"Sorry. Hello doctor. Do you and Ambulon want to pick rooms? I can show you all the vacancies. I made a little map."

"I was actually wondering if I could have Ambulon stay with me. He's a little... well, he doesn't do well with strangers."

"All of our crew quarters have at least one occupant already, I'm afraid,” Ultra Magnus said.

"I'm sure I could find something..." Ironfist said, concentrating on the screen he was almost hidden behind. "There are a few fairly large storage bays which aren't in use, if we put some recharge slabs and shelves in it'd be just like any other room. Except with no windows. Oh, or I guess I could just ask someone who's got a room to themself to share with someone else."

“I’d prefer the first option,” Pharma said, “I don’t want to displace anyone.”

“Very well. Ironfist, I trust you can arrange this by yourself? I have a few things to discuss with Pharma, and interrupted paperwork to catch up on.”

“I think I’ll be fine. Probably, I mean.”

“Hm. If you need any resources speak to Bulkhead. Tell him I authorised it. Call me if you have any problems.”

“Ok, thank you.”

Ultra Magnus gestured for Pharma to follow him into his office as Ironfist jumped down from his chair (revealing himself to be even shorter than Pharma had originally thought) and scurried out of the room clutching a datapad.

“There’s actually something important I need to discuss with you, as well,” Pharma said as the door closed.

“Yes?”

The two of them sat down on opposite sides of the commander’s huge desk. “It’s rather… well. It’s not something I would like to be general knowledge. It’s about Ambulon.”

“Ah. I was going to ask about him. I can’t find him in any Autobot personnel files.”

“That is because he isn’t an Autobot.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“He is-- _was_ \--a Decepticon. A prisoner aboard the same transport ship as I was a passenger upon. We were the only two who survived the crash, and… what was I supposed to do? Kill him? Leave him to die?”

Ultra Magnus frowned. “No, of course not.”

“Yes, exactly. But the fact is, we spent a few centuries trapped on Delphi together. I would never have been able to fix the shuttle without him, and after a while I started giving him medical training, in case I was ever injured. Besides, it gave us something to do over the decades. When we got the shuttle fixed up, I dug out some old paint from the wreckage of the ship and hid his Decepticon colours for the trip back. What I’m hoping is… is there any way that his past could be quietly forgotten? He’s a good person when you get down to it, unlike the other ‘cons. Wants to help people. He doesn’t deserve prison or whatever fate the other ‘cons got when the war ended.”

“Ah. Well. You needn’t worry, doctor. Here, read this.”

Pharma took the datapad offered to him, and turned on the first page. One of his eyebrows shot up. “The reintegration act? Is this what I think it is?”

“Yes. Essentially, it allowed all Decepticons without significant war crimes in their histories to remain citizens of Cybertron. Most of the text is defining what does and does not constitute a war crime.”

“You mean that… all these ‘bots around who I don’t recognise… some of them are..?”

“Former Decepticons. Yes. Most of them, in fact. At this point, Vehicons outnumber everyone else almost three to one. They have many and varied talents, and have been a great help in rebuilding this city and keeping it running. Ironfist, for example, used to work in Megatron’s energon mines.”

Pharma made a strangled noise. “And you trust him with such a high level of access?”

“Yes. He has proven to be reliable. And _extremely_ useful. Now, this actually brings me to what I wanted to discuss with you. Your position here.”

“Well, I assume I would continue in the same role I was in before my unfortunate crash. Ratchet’s second in command. Unless…” Pharma suddenly looked worried. “Ratchet wasn’t claimed by the war as well, was he?”

“No. No, but he has decided to remain on Earth, a planet where we spent no small amount of time during the final years of the war.”

“So you want me to replace him as CMO?”

“No. I am afraid not. Cybertron already has a new chief medical officer, a position being shared with Ratchet remaining in a supervisory role. However, given your exceptional skills, we would be grateful if you would remain as part of our medical staff.”

“Ah. Well. I see. Who _is_ the CMO, then?”

“His name is Knock Out--”

“ _Knock Out?_ ” Pharma interrupted, his eyes going wide, “He’s a Decepticon! A ‘con who is _infamous_ for experimenting with dangerous medical procedures on unwilling volunteers. Who created the bioweapon responsible for the death of _hundreds_ in Praxus. Who designed the interchangeable Vehicon frames so that dead soldiers could be used as _spare parts_. Who, if rumour is correct, once convinced a _Wrecker_ to turn on his own unit... _He_ is your chief medical officer?”

Ultra Magnus waited for Pharma to finish his tirade. “Yes,” he said simply.

“You _cannot_ be serious.”

“I’m afraid I am. If we had known you were still alive, I would have given the position to you, but unfortunately we did not possess that knowledge at the time, and Knock Out was, irrevocably, granted the position of CMO. I cannot say that I approve of having him in such a high ranking position, given his history, but Optimus Prime decided he was worth giving a second chance, and he has thus far utterly failed to disappoint me, so CMO he will remain unless he chooses to resign.”

“Or until he inevitably reverts to kind and does something _awful_.”

“Or, yes, until he breaks a law. Which, frankly, seems unlikely at this point. He’s been here for five years without incident.”

Pharma’s mouth curled into a contemptuous sneer. “It’s only a matter of time. Once a ‘con, always a ‘con.”

“I hope you are wrong, for the sake of Cybertron. But I do not entirely trust him, and I assure you that I am keeping a close eye on him.”

\---

Prowl stormed down the exit ramp of his tiny shuttle, kicked the external plating hard enough to leave a dent, then marched out across the moon, in no particular direction except away.

He kept walking until the pain in his chest grew bad enough to force him to stop, and he stood watching the asteroids circling the moon. The escapees had apparently failed to properly repair the external sensors of the ship, because none of these giant, fast moving space rocks had shown up on the radar. Prowl hadn’t seen the asteroid field until he was within visual range of it, and by then it had been too late to turn the shuttle--the steering was even worse than it was before spending a few centuries in an icy shuttle bay.

He’d managed to land them on one of the larger asteroids, about the size of a small moon, but not before one of the engines had been hit.

This delay in reaching Cybertron was unacceptable. Pharma could already be there, spreading lies, ingratiating himself… Prowl knew from experience how dangerously convincing the medic could be.

One thing he and the Constructicons agreed upon entirely was that Pharma needed to die, though their reasons differed. For Prowl it was a desire to keep the universe safe from the mad doctor. For the Constructicons it was entirely about revenge. The doctor had killed Scrapper, and that was an offense which would not be forgiven.

The ache in his spark started to lessen, and he knew his five travel companions had finally worked up the courage to follow their irate leader out of the ship and go looking for him.

The bond made it depressingly easy for them to find him. They spread out over fifty meters or so to triangulate his position, then gathered together and homed in on him like a laser guided missile--they certainly had similar destructive capabilities, at any rate.

“Hi, Prowl. We’ve pretty much fixed the ship.”

Prowl spent a few moments erasing the anger from his face and installing a calm, cold expression before turning around. “How certain are you it will fly?”

“Fifty-fifty,” Scavenger said cheerfully.

“ _Wonderful_ ,” Prowl said scathingly.

“I’d like to see _you_ do better,” Long Haul said, only to be elbowed by Bonecrusher.

“You’re _Constructicons_. Isn’t this your area of expertise?”

“Pft, we actually mostly just break stuff,” Mixmaster said.

“Well, by all means then, let us get back in the death trap and continue on our journey.”

“Sure thing, boss.” The ‘cons deliberately ignored the sarcasm in his voice.

As it turned out, the shuttle flew, but only at about a third of the speed it had previously.

“We need to find somewhere to do proper repairs,” Hook said as he watched Prowl wrestle with the controls.

“Please distract me with this conversation _after_ I’ve finished navigating the asteroid field,” Prowl snapped, and Hook held up both hands in a placating gesture.

The five Constructicons moved to the back of the shuttle, trusting Prowl to steer them out of the mess they were in. “Where’s the nearest space port?” Mixmaster asked.

Hook pulled up a map of their local area on a monitor display. “Well, these maps are almost four hundred years out of date, but if there is a station not to far from here.” He pointed to a tiny dot. “We could get the parts we need to fix the ship here.”

“D’we really need to stop?”

“Yes. The patch job we did on the engine is temporary at best.”

“So! Who gets to tell Prowl we have to make a detour?” Long Haul asked.

Scavenger was the last to put his hand on his forehead and say ‘not it’, so when they felt some of the tension and intense concentration bleed out of their bond with Prowl, he was shoved to the front of the shuttle to break the news.


	8. Chapter Eight

"Are you sure that's the best method to be teaching your students?"

Knock Out rolled his eyes and turned away from the diagram he was painstakingly drawing on the large screen in the medbay.

"If I wasn't, Pharma, would I have spent the last twenty minutes drawing this?"

The medic snorted. "I try not to fathom the minds of Decepticons."

Knock Out scowled. From the second he had been introduced to the doctor the two of them had been developing and fine-tuning an enmity. Pharma had made it quite clear he disapproved of having an ex-Decepticon in the planet at all, let alone acting as CMO, and Knock Out had responded with his usual tact and charm; which is to say he did everything he could to antagonise Pharma further.

"For the last time, I'm not a Decepticon any more. I am _officially_ an Autobot."

"Only in name. Only because of a bit of misguided legislation the Commander passed. We both know that if you had the choice you'd still be holed up in your lab on the Nemesis torturing Vehicons or whatever it is you did for fun."

"For your information, I never tortured the Vehicons. That's what _prisoners_ were for."

"And I'd bet anything that you haven't changed a bit."

Knock Out shrugged. "No, not really." He leaned casually against the wall and gave the doctor his best evil grin. "Except that now I have students rather than prisoners, and I use learning to hurt them."

Pharma's face twisted into a contemptuous sneer. "You disgust me. You've betrayed every principle a doctor should hold, and betraying your team at the last second doesn't make up for all the bad you did."

"Alright, listen here, Farm, or whatever your name is--"

" _Pharma_."

"Whatever. Listen to me very carefully: You have no authority over me and I don't care what you think, so your opinion is meaningless. I'm the chief medical officer and you haven't even officially accepted a position on my medical staff. So, unless you're injured, you can get the _hell_ out of my medbay. My students will be here soon, and I don't need you filling their heads up with your out-of-date medical knowledge."

Pharma gave him one last glare before he turned on his heel and stalked out. First Aid and Velocity passed him on their way in.

"Where you fighting again?" Velocity asked cheerfully. She had taken the animosity between the two doctors in her stride, already used to dealing with Knock Out's sterling personality.

First Aid was taking it less well.

"You shouldn't be pushing him out. He's one of the greatest medics of all time, we could be learning from him."

Knock Out scowled at his student. "He's been out of circulation for hundreds of years. Any medical knowledge he has is woefully out of date. Anyway, he's obnoxious ."

First Aid muttered something which might have been "So are you," but Knock Out chose to ignore it.

\---

"Excuse me doctor, but Ultra Magnus wanted to know if you've made a decision about whether or not to join the city's medical staff or not?" Ironfist asked, appearing beside Pharma’s table as he and Ambulon were consuming their energon rations.

"No," Pharma.

"No you haven't decided, or--"

"No, I won't be joining the medical staff. I won't work for that Decepticon _butcher_. Neither will Ambulon."

"Oh. Oh, I see. I'll make sure the commander knows. Um..."

"Is there anything else?" Pharma asked curtly.

"Well, it's just... if you're not going to take on medical duties we have to assign you something else. Not straight away, I mean, but after you're settled in. You should think about, um, what you want to do. There's lots of rebuilding that needs doing. There are lots of jobs. Administrative duties. Managing infrastructure. Repair and maintenance. Construction work. That sort of thing."

Pharma stared at him incredulously. "You want Ambulon and I to be _general labourers?_ "

"Um, no? Only if you want to be? There are lots of different jobs you could--"

Pharma stood up. "I am a doctor. In fact, aside from Ratchet, I am quite probably the greatest Cybertronian doctor alive. And I'm not being allowed to practice because of a _Decepticon_ who has everyone _fooled_ into thinking he's turned over a new leaf. How _dare_ you come here and ask me to do something else? To give up my life's work?"

"I just--"

"I don't care," he snapped, "I’m not putting up with this from a _Vehicon_ of all people. Ambulon, we're leaving."

Ambulon looked up, startled. He didn't seem to have been listening, lost in a medical text he was reading on an antique datapad.

"Let's go." The doctor took Ambulon by the arm.

As Pharma practically dragged him away, Ambulon looked over his shoulder and waved goodbye. Ironfist waved back, then sighed. At least the doctor's student seemed nice, if a little absent. And he seemed a little familiar, as well. Ironfist desperately wanted to talk to him, figure out where they might have met before, but Pharma was incredibly protective of his student and barely ever let him out of his sight.

Since he was in the main hall anyway, Ironfist picked up his evening ration a little early, with the intention of going back to his desk to report to Ultra Magnus then finish processing Bulkhead's requisition forms for building materials. With Rewind still sick, Ultra Magnus had been finding busywork for Ironfist to do, which largely involved doing simple administrative tasks that the commander didn’t have time for himself. Ironfist was enjoying the work immensely, and sincerely hoped he would be able to do the job forever instead of going back to his old construction job, at which he did _not_ excel.

Energon ration in one hand and a datapad in the other, he set off back to the office, reading a report as he walked.

Engrossed in his reading, he ended up walking right into another 'bot who was entering the main hall as he tried to leave.

"Sorry!" he said, looking up. And looking up further. "Ah, sorry, Thundercracker, I didn't see you!"

"Hey, it's just the little guy I wanted to see," said the large jet he'd just crashed into, "Ironfist, right?"

"Er, yes? Can I help with something?"

"Yeah." Thundercracker leaned forwards, suddenly looming menacingly over the little Vehicon. "The patrol roster came out this morning. Guess whose name was signed to it?"

"Mine?" Ironfist said, uncertainly. He had put together the rosters for the next few weeks at Ultra Magnus' request.

"Right. And I want to know why exactly you scheduled me to fly patrols with _Slipstream_ for the entirety of next week."

Ironfist took a step backwards, his visor flashing with anxiety. Thundercracker was at least three times his size. "S-slipstream? Oh. _Oh_. Um. I just built the roster in the most efficient way, I didn't really take into account any, er, personal issues. Um. Sorry?"

"Don't be sorry, tiny, just fix it."

"I can't!" Ironfist all but squeaked, backing away another step, "I already submitted it to the commander and he approved it! It's finalised!"

"I don't care," Thundercracker snarled. "Make sure you fix it, or things'll go badly for you, ok?" He reached out and shoved Ironfist in the chest, making him stumble backwards and drop his datapad and energon ration.

While Ironfist was busy scrabbling with the bottle of energon, trying to get the lid back on and clean up what had spilled, Thundercracker picked up the datapad and flipped through a few pages. "What the hell is this?" he asked.

Ironfist froze.

"That's mine. Give it back."

"Nah. Come on, what is this?" He held the datapad up and read a line from it: " _While Broadside, Sandstorm, and Whirl fought in the sky, the other Wreckers were pinned down in the trenches..._ "

"Please just give it back!"

"Seriously, what is this? Some kind of Wreckers fanfiction? That is _really_ nerdy."

"No! It's just their old reports from their missions, they're declassified so it's totally ok to read them!"

"Really? I find it hard to believe they wrote their reports in story format."

"I may have rewritten them slightly but it's just for fun, please, no one was ever supposed to _read_ them!"

Ironfist tried to jump up and snatch the datapad back, but since he barely came up to Thundercracker's waist his attempts were futile.

"You don't want anyone reading them? How about this: I'll give this back to you with no one the wiser if you can change the patrol schedule. Otherwise, it goes on the city dataweb."

"I _can't_ ," Ironfist said, his eyes flaring brighter with panic, "I swear, I would if I could, but once they're approved I can just make changes. They're in the system, the commander will notice!"

"Then come up with something to convince him to let you change it," Thundercracker said, shrugging, "Look, I don't care what you do, just fix it."

\---

"This wasn't on the map," Hook said, squinting at the viewscreen in Prowl's shuttle.

"Should we wake the boss?" Bonecrusher asked.

"Naw, let him sleep. We can handle one little wreck."

"That's hardly a _little_ wreck."

"Yeah, but I bet we can salvage enough parts to get Prowl's shuttle fixed," Scavenger said, almost bouncing with enthusiasm at the idea, "He'll be so impressed if we manage to fix the shuttle for him."

"Guys, don't be dumb," Mixmaster said, "We don't know _anything_ about this junker. It could be filled with... with, you know, space ghosts and evil parasites or whatever."

"We know it's an Autobot ship," Hook said, pointing at the viewscreen, "Look at the design. It's an Autobot warship. A few thousand years old at least. Anything in there is long since dead, and it's definitely out of power."

"And it looks like it's pretty much in one piece."

"I still think we should at least wait for Prowl. That ship looks super creepy."

"Shall we take a vote, then? All those in favour of staying here and waiting for Prowl to wake up?"

Mixmaster put up his hand, then slowly lowered it when no one else did.

"Looks like we're going scrounging, then. Long Haul, bring us in to dock."

The Constructicon took the pilot's seat, switched off the autopilot using the code he had very carefully pretended not to notice Prowl using earlier, and guided the shuttle towards the massive warship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The line Thundercracker reads out is taken straight from one of Ironfist's stories in Last Stand of the Wreckers, when he's telling Verity about what happened at Pova.
> 
> Next chapter will be checking in on what's happening on Earth, and more Poor Life Choices Theatre with Prowl and the Constructicons.


	9. Chapter Nine

Soundwave listened to Ratchet and the human going over the coding from the listening device with the new Autobot. He was unable to interact with the physical world, but he could still observe it, with the added advantage of not being observed in return. Finding and accessing the Autobot base had not been difficult.

Soundwave hadn't been able to find any references to the new Autobot in his now-diminished database, but from their conversation he learned that his name was Perceptor, and that he was a scientist.

His presence here was unexpected. He was not part of Soundwave's plan.

He might ruin everything.

Soundwave raised one hand to his chest, where Laserbeak was resting in stasis.

If this plan failed, Soundwave would have to make an unpleasant choice. Even with all unnecessary systems shut down, even with Laserbeak in stasis, Soundwave could not afford to continue expending his dwindling energon reserves on keeping his spy drone alive for much longer.

If this plan failed, he would have to abandon Laserbeak to die.

He reactivated his communication systems briefly, for just enough time to check up on a few situations he was monitoring and send a message advising his human minion that the Autobots had found their listening device.

It was time to start the next stage of his plan, and hope that Perceptor's presence wouldn't cause any problems.

\---

The second he woke up, Prowl knew something was wrong. The Constructicons were far away. Well over a kilometre. Which, given his shuttle was no more than two hundred meters long, meant that the Constructicons were outside the ship.

He threw himself across his quarters to the display panel on the wall, bringing up the shuttle's systems status.

The shuttle was docked.

Prowl swore loudly, punching the wall next to the display screen before running for the bridge.

He sat down in the pilot's chair and turned on the main screen to take a look at whatever it was the shuttle was docked on.

The scanners showed a mass of metal. Certainly a ship or station of some sort.

He pulled up a playback from the external cameras and skipped through the last few hours until he could watch the shuttle approaching a massive warship. He frowned at the design; Autobot, a couple thousand years old. An unpleasant suspicion entered his mind, and he fast forwarded through the playback, watching the shuttle circle around, trying to catch sight of the warship’s name…

_There_.

He felt panic rising in the back of his mind and had to struggle for a moment to fight it down before he could think clearly again.

The second felt calm again he ran a few more scans of the ship they were docked on. There were no lifesigns aside from the five he expected, and no major energy sources… but there were a few small hotspots, where some part of the ship or piece of equipment was still functioning after all these years.

He turned on the shuttle’s comms system. “ _Constructicons! You all need to get back to the shuttle right now. Do you hear me?_ ”

“ _Don’t worry Prowl,_ ” came a staticky response from Scavenger, “ _We’re just getting some spare parts. We’ll be back in…_ ” the line dissolved into white noise, and Prowl swore again, quietly this time.

The only thing that stopped him from disengaging from the ship right now and leaving the Constructicons to their fate was the knowledge that he would die after about twenty kilometers, when the invisible bond that linked their sparks together stretched too thin.

He shut off his eyes for a few moments, collecting himself, before grabbing a blaster he’d stashed in his quarters and heading for the airlock.

\---

“Wow. Mixmaster was right about this place bein’ creepy.”

“It’s just a dead body, Bonecrusher, leave it be. The quicker we find the shuttle bay, the quicker we can steal some parts and get back to Prowl.”

“It’s been torn in half.”

“So? I’ve seen _you_ do that to people.”

“Small people, yeah. This guy’s as big as I am.” Bonecrusher prodded the corpse they were gathered around with his foot, turning it over so they could see its face.

“He looks familiar. I think he beat me up once. Yeah, at Simanzi. You guys remember? His name was… I dunno, Big Castle or something.”

“Fortress Maximus..?” Hook supplied.

“Yeah, that’s the guy. Look at him now, not so tough…”

"Let's just keep movin', ok?"

The Constructicons continued down the corridor. They were heading for the rear of the ship, where the shuttle bay was most likely to be situated.

"Did you feel how worried Prowl was when he woke up?" Bonecrusher asked as he wrenched a door from its frame. With no power in the ship, the automatic doors were all jammed shut.

"Yeah!" Scavenger said, nodding eagerly, "He pretends not to care, but he was worried when he thought we were missing..."

"I dunno, guys, I don't think his message sounded worried so much as angry. Plus, he seemed pretty insistent we should leave. Maybe he knows something we don't, maybe the ship is dangerous?"

"Shut up, Mix Master. It's just an old junker, we've ripped off dozens in our time, what's the problem with this one?"

"Well, all the corpses, mostly," Mix Master said, gingerly stepping over a 'bot with a hole punched through her chest, "There's something off about them. If there was a fight, where are all the 'cons?"

"Pft, maybe there were no casualties on our side. Most of these 'bots are pretty nerdy looking. That one looks like a medic." Long Haul pointed to a small 'bot with red symbols on its shoulders and no head.

Mix Master grumbled quietly to himself as they continued walking.

"Hey, guys, is Prowl getting closer?"

The 'cons looked at each other, and concentrated on their bond. Prowl was indeed moving towards them, rather rapidly.

" _Prowl? Prowl, you can just stay with the shuttle. Prowl? Can you hear me?_ " Hook tapped his comm system, and shrugged. "I think there's too much interference, he can't hear us."

Bonecrusher sighed. “Let’s just keep moving. He’s gonna be mad no matter what, now.”

“Hey, there are some big doors up ahead. Maybe they’re for the shuttle bay!”

The doors were indeed large, but as they approached them the word “BRIDGE” was clearly visible beside them.

“Well, we’ve been walking in _completely_ the wrong direction,” Hook said.

“Let’s check inside, see if there’s a map?”

“Sure, why not.”

Bonecrusher and Long Haul between them managed to peel the sliding doors open, and shone their headlights into the room.

Mixmaster let out an audible whimper at what was inside.

Bodies. Dozens and dozens of bodies, piled up around the edges and scattered around the control panels. All of them torn apart of with massive holes in them.

“What the hell _happened_ on this ship?” Long Haul said. The others shied away from the loudness of his voice, which echoed around the large room.

“Look, they’re all dead,” Hook said, “Whatever it was, it happened hundreds of years ago. Just… go find a map, and try not to _touch_ anything…”

The Constructicons spread out, gingerly making their way between the gruesome corpses.

Scavenger tripped over a body slumped against a control panel, almost unseen in the darkness. He turned his headlights on it. It had faded red and orange paint, coated with a layer of dust, with ostentatious flares added to its armour. There was a small hole in its head and no other visible damage, which made it stand out against the brutality with which all of the other corpses had been torn apart.

“I think this one killed himself,” he called to the others, pulling a depleted blaster from the Autobot’s hand.

“Weird,” Long Haul said at they all converged on the dead ‘bot, ”Autobots are usually ‘fight to the death’ sorts. Honour blah blah.”

Prowl caught up to them as they were gathered around the corpse, arguing over the likelihood of suicide.

“What the hell are you idiots thinking?” he hissed, “We have to get off this warship immediately!”

They startled at the unexpected noise; their exploration of the bridge had distracted them from his rapid approach. Mixmaster yelped, then quickly stifled the noise when Long Haul shot him a disgusted look.

“We, uh, we were looking for spare parts,” Scavenger said by way of explanation.

“I gathered that,” Prowl said coldly, “Did none of you think to look at the name painted on the side of this ship? Did it not occur to any of you to check what you were walking into?”

The Constructicons looked at each other, then shrugged. “It’s just an old ship.”

“Kinda creepy,” Mixmaster said, “But, well, everyone’s been dead for ages.”

“One thousand seven hundred and thirty two years, to be more precise,” Prowl said, “This ship? This is the _Lost Light_.”

The Constructicons stared at him in shocked silence for a moment.

“Wait… really? Scavenger finally said, “The _Lost Light_? I thought that was a ghost story.”

“Nah, ‘s totally real,” Bonecrusher said, “Went missing at the height of the war, turned the tide in our favour.”

“No way, that’s just some bunk Megatron made up to raise morale.”

“Bonecrusher is correct,” Prowl interrupted before an argument could break out, “At the time of its disappearance the _Lost Light_ was carrying over two hundred Autobots--almost a quarter of our remaining troops at the time, including several members of High Command. That ‘bot you’re all gawking at is Rodimus, captain of the ship. And over there behind Mixmaster--” he pointed to a ‘bot who’d been ripped in half “--is his second in command, Chromia.”

Mixmaster skittered away from the corpse he’d been just about standing on.

“Wait, this guy’s the captain? What kind of captain snuffs himself rather than fighting?”

“I imagine he was following orders,” Prowl said, “Using a code to shut down the ship and all systems within, then ensure that the enemy could not get the code from him, leaving them stranded here.”

“Whoa, he was _ordered_ to kill himself? That's _cold_. I thought Autobots were too squeamish for that sort of thing.”

Prowl snorted. “We don’t have time for me to explain the history of this ship to you. We have to leave, get back to the shuttle before anyone else finds it.”

“Wait, you think there’s someone alive on this junker?”

“No way, we scanned for life signs.”

“The prisoner this ship was transporting wouldn’t show up on scans,” Prowl snapped, “So stop standing around asking questions and _move_.”

The Constructicons finally started moving, galvanized by the tightly controlled fear they could feel flickering through their bond with Prowl.

The corridors of the ship were large, designed to accommodate even the largest of Autobots, so Prowl and the Constructicons dropped into their alt-modes; a sleek hovercar and five chunky construction vehicles, and they sped back towards where their shuttle was docked.

They were forced to skid to a halt and tumble back into their robot modes when they turned a corner and just about crashed into a door.

“Ow,” Scrapper said from the bottom of the resulting pileup. “I thought we opened all the doors. Are we going the wrong way?”

“No,” Hook said, pushing Mixmaster off him, “it looks like someone put it back in place. Look, the edges are all crumpled.”

“Wait, so someone else really is onboard?” Mixmaster whispered.

“Yes, and they know we’re here,” Prowl said, “Get this door open again. Hurry.”

“It’s a bit late for that,” came a new voice, and the Constructicons whirled around as Prowl froze in spot.

A massive steel blue Cybertronian, so tall that they had to bend over to fit in the hallway, was leaning on the wall a few hundred meters behind the Constructicons. Red eyes gleamed, and the Constructicons’ headlights reflected off a wide, malicious, sharp-toothed grin.

“I knew that sooner or later someone would be stupid enough to come and let me out,” the Cybertronian continued in a bizarrely cheerful voice, “But I really didn’t think that someone would be you of all people, Prowl.”

Prowl forced himself to turn around and look at the person addressing him as the Constructicons instinctively gathered close to him, feeling the terror he was struggling to keep under control.

“Overlord,” he said, “I really hoped you would be dead by now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, then. I'm probably going to move the narrative back to Cybertron for the next chapter, leave this cliffhanger hanging for a bit longer. Incidentally, at this point I want to say that I don't and won't have any original characters in this story. Soundwave has a human doing his bidding: this human is an established character from one of the franchises--Soundwave just had no reason to mention their name.
> 
> Also, now that I've set up all the major plots and characters, I'd be interested to know which storylines and characters people reading this are enjoying the most. Who do you want to see more of, and who don't you care about? Which plots are the most interesting?


	10. Chapter Ten

Knock Out tapped his clawed fingers on his desk impatiently, checking his internal chronometer again.

“Where is First Aid?” he asked finally, “He’s ten minutes late now.”

Velocity sunk lower in her chair, trying to avoid his glare, which had been firmly locked on her since she arrived, as if First Aid's absence was somehow her fault.

“Maybe he’s sick?” she asked.

“If he’s sick enough to miss classes he’s sick enough to be in the medbay anyway. Comm him and tell him he’s getting expelled if he isn’t here in five minutes.”

“Um, can you do that?”

“Who knows? We’ll find out if he doesn’t turn up, won’t we?”

“...Can’t you tell him? I'm not very good at being threatening."

“No. I never bothered to get his comm frequency.”

Velocity sighed and switched on her comm system, standing up and walking to the far side of the room to make the call.

Knock Out tapped his fingers louder while he waited for their conversation to conclude.

“You’re, uh, you’re not going to like this,” Velocity finally said, ending the call but not moving any closer.

“Spit it out.”

“He says he asked Pharma to take over training him, so he’s not coming any more.”

Velocity backpedaled a few steps as Knock Out actually snarled. He usually kept his temper in check, preferring to show his displeasure through nasty little comments and jibes, but right now he didn’t seem inclined towards self-restraint. “Does he really think that old hack is a better medic than _me_?” he demanded, starting to pace across the room, balling his claws into fists. “He’s missed four hundred years of medical advancements! He doesn’t even know what he doesn’t know! Do you know how much _work_ medics have to put into keeping up? How much of my time over the past four centuries I’ve spent reading dull medical texts and perfecting new procedures?”

Velocity held her hands up in a calming gesture. “I’m sure he’ll come around! And anyway, you didn’t even want students in the first place, right? Shouldn’t you be happy to get rid of one?”

Knock Out stopped abruptly, seeming to realise he’d lost his temper. He shut off his eyes for a few moments, stood up straight, and brushed some imaginary dust off his shoulder. “Of course. What do I care if he sets the medical profession back four centuries? It’s none of my concern. In fact, you should join your little friend, leave me to get on with more important work.”

“No way,” Velocity said, shaking her head vehemently, “Pharma _seems_ nice, but he makes my plating crawl.”

“Hm! Well, I’m glad _someone_ agrees with me. His veneer of affability is covering a pretty bad attitude, if you ask me.”

_Well_ , Velocity thought, _at least Knock Out is up front with his bad attitude_. “You should hear the way he talks to the Vehicons when he thinks no one else is listening,” she said.

“Oh, really? Do tell.”

“Well…"

The two of them spent half of the allotted time for the lesson gossiping about and badmouthing Pharma, which seemed to cheer Knock Out up to no end. Velocity wasn’t really surprised. She’d quickly learned that all that was really needed to keep him happy was someone agreeing with him, along with the occasional ego boost.

“...so I can stay, right?” she asked when she was sure there was no trace of his earlier bad mood, “I want to keep training, but not with Pharma.”

“Hm? Oh, yes. I don’t see why not. Perhaps teaching will be more agreeable if I only have to worry about marking one student’s work. I suppose we should get back to the lesson, then.”

He absently tossed a small toolkit at her head, which Velocity snatched out of the air with practiced ease--by now she was used to him casually throwing stuff at her.

“Today we’re going to _dissect_ stuff,” he told her gleefully.

“Ah, First Aid will be sorry he missed _this_.”

\---

Knock Out, rumour had it, collected the bodies of dead Vehicons. Velocity hadn’t really put much stock in the rumour before today, but with the multitude of body parts he produced from the storage container on his desk, she suddenly believed it utterly.

“I had to drive all the way out to the ruins of the Nemesis to get these,” he told her, passing her a slightly charred t-cog and someone’s left arm.

“So, uh, you had these just laying around, huh?”

“Of course not. I have a very careful storage system for spare Vehicon parts.”

“And you have them because…”

Knock Out raised one eyebrow at her. “Waste not want not,” he said smugly, “When we were building the Vehicons I specifically made sure there were only a small number of frame varieties, and that their parts easily detachable with the right equipment. That way they can be repaired quickly and easily.”

“Oh. Well, that makes sense.”

“It also means that whenever a Vehicon died we could easily recycle them into spares.”

Ah.

Velocity fumbled the t-cog she was holding, but managed to catch it again before it hit the ground.

Knock Out didn’t seem to notice. He was busy laying out equipment and body parts on a table he’d covered with clear plastic sheeting.

“That’s a bit, um, gruesome.”

“Efficient, though. _We_ never ran out of medical supplies like the Autobots did.”

Velocity once again noted the way he dissociated himself from the Autobots, still referring to himself as a Decepticon. He tended to do that if he wasn’t paying attention. She should really report the slips to Ultra Magnus, who had quietly asked her to continue keeping an eye on him, but hadn’t gotten around to it yet.

“Wait… when you say you _built_ the Vehicons... do you mean you rebuilt them? With new frames?”

“Hah! I was wondering if you’d catch that.” Knock Out finished setting up the table and dropped the empty container on the floor. There was more or less a whole Vehicon laid out on the table, composed of mismatched bits and pieces, all damaged in some way. “If you’re going to be a medic, if you’re going to ever work on the Vehicons, there’s some stuff you’ll need to know, but you have to promise not to tell anyone.”

“What, no one? What about the other medics?”

“No one. Not Pharma, not First Aid, and certainly not Ultra Magnus. The Vehicons would be very unhappy if their secret origins were revealed, understand?”

Velocity shifted uncomfortably. She didn’t want to make a promise she might not be able to keep. “It’s nothing that’ll cause trouble, is it?”

“No. This is all ancient history, hopefully never to be repeated, now that the Well of Allsparks is reignited.”

“So it’s just medical stuff, stuff I need to know if I’m fixing them.”

“Yes.”

“...alright then.” Velocity held up one hand, palm out, like she was swearing and oath, “I promise never to reveal what you’re about to tell me.”

“Excellent. Now, sit down and I’ll explain.”

Velocity nodded and sat back down at her desk. Knock Out remained standing, starting to draw a diagram on the massive screen at the front of the room. “We _made_ the Vehicons,” he said, “Well, Shockwave did most of the work. But I built the frames. Well, Breakdown helped.”

“You _made_ them? But… they have sparks. They aren’t just automatons, there’s _no way_.” Velocity thought back to all the conversations she’d had with Vehicons. They all had fears and and hopes and dreams… there was no way an artificial intelligence would be able to so completely mimic a real spark.

“Yes, they have sparks. Just not… _proper_ sparks. You know that if a spark is damaged, the missing part eventually grows back, so long as the damage doesn’t instantly destroy it?”

“Yes, there was a chapter in the last textbook about that.”

“Right. So, imagine, if you will: it’s the height of the war, the Autobots outnumber us two to one, and we’re running out of the sparks we managed to retrieve before the last hot spot went dark, so we’re running out of soldiers. Megatron orders Shockwave to find some way to create artificial sparks.”

“Wait, how could it be possible to make an artificial spark? They come from Primus, from the core… you can’t just _make_ a spark.”

“Well, as it turned out, you’re completely right. Not that Shockwave didn’t waste a few decades trying. Anyway, I’m really not certain how he got the idea, but he requisitioned one of the few remaining sparks we had, and split it exactly in half. See where this is going?”

Velocity stared at the diagram on the board as Knock Out used his fingers to split his drawing of a spark in half and move two halves apart.

“...if it’s split _exactly_ in half… both halves would grow back?” Velocity’s eyes widened at the idea. “And then you have two whole sparks.”

“Correct. The split has to be exact, though, down to the nanometre, otherwise one half is extinguished. It took Shockwave a long time to get it right. But eventually he did, and he took the last dozen or so sparks, split them, waited for them to grow back, split them again… and so on until we had enough for an army, and then we just implanted them into pre-made bodies, rather than waiting for them to grow their own. Megatron told everyone that a new batch of sparks had been discovered to cover up the experiments.”

“Oh, _Primus_.”

“Hah, Primus had nothing to do with it. There’s some stuff about Vehicons you’ll need to know, though. The spark-splitting process made them--in medical terms--a bit weird.”

“'Weird'.”

“Yes. For starters, they tend to only be good at one or two things. Not great independant thinkers. They learn more slowly than normal Cybertronians, as well. But the big thing to know for medical reasons, is that a lot of their sparks spin counter-clockwise, which will be important if they ever get damaged.”

“Oh. Because all our medical equipment is made for sparks that spin clockwise. Because as far as we knew _all_ sparks spin clockwise...”

“So it’s very, very important to always scan their spark before hooking them up to anything, and if necessary change the settings. At some point I’ll show you how to remove the safeties from our spark support machine so you can make it spin the other way.”

“Shouldn’t you make sure the other medics know about that? What if they need to treat someone?”

“No. All of the Vehicons in existence are right here on Cybertron, and I’m the CMO. I can make sure that I treat them for anything serious. I was going to tell First Aid as well, but he's recently proved himself _unreliable_... Anyway, It’s more important that this doesn’t become general knowledge.”

“Why?”

“Well, you can imagine some people might treat them differently if they knew. Just like everyone is afraid of Shockwave’s predacon clones. At the moment, so far as everyone knows, the Vehicons are just normal soldiers who were forced into uniform frames and given serial numbers instead of names to dehumanize them. That’s a more sympathetic story for them, yes?”

“Not to mention that if it ever came to light you'd have to go through another trial. Ultra Magnus would reevaluated your probation. You might lose your job."

"Well there's also that, but it's mostly the first thing."

Velocity nodded slowly. "I can see the benefits of keeping it quiet."

“Good. Now…” he gestured at the table he’d set up the Vehicon body parts on, “Let’s show you how to take someone apart and put them together again.”

\---

Thundercracker found Ironfist in the main hall trying to grab his energon rations and make a run for it.

"Hey, little guy, where do you think you're going?"

"I'm going back to work, excuse me please."

Thundercracker put out one hand to stop the tiny 'bot from scurrying past him, and shepherded him towards a table in one of the corners.

"I can't help but notice that the roster hasn't changed," he said.

"I'm sorry, I tried! I told the commander that you'd asked not to go with Slipstream but that I forgot and needed to change it."

"I'm guessing he told you something like 'I won't allow the schedule to be shuffled around just because two Vehicons are having a scuffle' and then gave you a speech about teamwork. Right?"

"More or less," Ironfist said, miserably.

Thundercracker sighed and slumped down in his seat, looking more resigned than angry. "Well, you tried your best."

Ironfist felt a glimmer of hope. “Can… can I have my datapad back? Please? I promise I won’t schedule you together again.”

"Yeah, you can have it back..."

He held out the datapad towards Ironfist, but kept it just out of reach.

"...on one condition."

"...what do you want?"

"I wanna read any more of these you write."

Ironfist rocked back in his seat in surprise, visor flickering. "Sorry?"

"If you write any more. I wanna read them."

"I don't understand."

Thundercracker rolled his eyes, which were clearly visible--at some point he'd had his visor removed. Ironfist briefly wondered how he'd convinced Knock Out to do something which was nice but unnecessary. Probably bribed him.

"I read your Wrecker fanfiction last night--"

"--It's not fanfiction--"

"--and it's pretty good, actually. Ended up staying awake all night reading. I mean, your spelling is atrocious, but the stories are good."

Ironfist stared at the much larger Vehicon. He couldn't decide whether he was pleased or annoyed by Thundercracker's words.

"...I think my spelling is pretty good for a mining class Vehicon with no formal education," he said eventually, in a somewhat defensive tone.

"Maybe, but it still sucks by normal standards. You should use a spell check at the very least, jeez."

Ironfist huffed and grabbed for the datapad again, as Thundercracker dangled it just out of reach above his head.

"Ah ah ah! Do we have a deal? I'm not giving this back 'til we got a deal."

"Fine! Fine, just give it back. Please!"

Thundercracker dropped the datapad into Ironfist's hands.

"By the way, I highlighted all the mistakes in red," he said as he stood to leave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter feels kind of dull, sorry. Some necessary worldbuilding stuff. And I really wasn't feeling the story arc for Ironfist, so I just sort of wrapped it up without any proper conflict.
> 
> Next chapter will be Prowl and the Constructicons vs Overlord.


	11. Chapter Eleven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who is still reading this! I'm sorry I haven't updated in three weeks then come back with this tiny chapter. My life sort of fell apart for a while there, but everything's fine now and I have time to write again! Next chapter soon!
> 
> Also, I keep catching myself writing "Scrapper" instead of "Scavenger". I think I've caught them all, but if anyone finds an errant Scrapper, just know that their dead leader hasn't magically returned to life, haha.

"Oh, I wouldn't bother," Overlord said in his smooth, friendly voice, "I made sure that door was sealed up tight. You won't escape through there."

Bonecrusher and Long Haul had apparently come to the same conclusion, because they gave up on trying to break down the door--Long Haul giving it a final, angry, kick--instead pushing the others aside to stand protectively in front of them.

Overlord seemed to find this amusing. He had a light, elegant laugh, completely at odds with his fearsome appearance.

The sound made Prowl's plating crawl.

“We should make a game of this,” Overlord continued, pacing towards them down the corridor, his head occasionally scraping the ceiling despite his hunched posture. "A challenge is more fun if there's a chance of losing, don't you think?"

The Constructicons huddled further together, trying to keep Prowl behind them. They were trapped up against the sealed door, with Overlord's massive frame blocking any escape.

"How about a race? See who makes it back to your shuttle first. I ran a sensor sweep, so I know where it's docked. That makes it fair, yes?"

"Wh-what kind of race?" Scavenger asked, not quite managing to keep the fear out of his voice.

"Well! You see behind me, there are two doors. I go right, you go left, and whoever gets to the shuttle first wins. Does that sound fun? Would you like to take me up on that challenge? And before you answer, keep in mind that if you decline I will simply tear you all apart right here and now."

A flicker of hope passed through their bond.

"Yes," Hook said, "We accept."

\---

Overlord gestured politely for his six potential victims to go first, watching with a pleasant smile and a dangerous gleam in his eyes as they nervously shuffled past him and took the door to the left. Once they were past, they all immediately and without discussion dropped into their alt-modes and made a break for it, all of them expecting him to follow them after all.

He didn’t.

He watched them go until they had turned a corner, then, slowly, casually, walked in the opposite direction.

\---

“ _He’s playing with us, isn’t he?_ ” Hook shouted over their shared comm frequency, sounding more alarmed than Prowl had ever heard him. “ _He must be. He must have a trap set, closed doors to block us off…_ ”

“ _We gotta try anyway!_ ” Bonecrusher said. He was taking up the rear; the massive bulldozer was the slowest of them, and the strongest. Long Haul had taken the lead, being the largest, if not the fastest.

Prowl knew he was faster than any of them, and the urge to race ahead and leave them to their fate was almost overwhelming. He didn't owe these 'cons anything.

"Don't even think about it, tiny," Long Haul said, pulling back slightly until he was alongside Prowl, "Remember, if we die, you die."

He didn't bother responding. This close to them, he assumed they could feel his reaction; a combination of irritation at their intrusion into his thoughts and anger at the knowledge that his fate was tied to theirs. Instead, he pulled ahead just a little, overtaking Long Haul then taking a sharp left into a smaller side corridor. "This way, it's faster!”

The sound of screeching tires behind him told him that they were following, but were less maneuverable than he was, struggling to make the turn.

"A little warning next time?" Long Haul snapped when he caught up again. "How do you know, anyway? Why aren't we taking the main corridor, it goes straight towards the dock!"

"It's a dead end. Our advantage here is that Overlord is underestimating how well I know this ship." Prowl led them down another left turn, then right again. "He's assuming we'll get lost in the corridors and have no chance of beating him. He's been here for a long time, so he thinks he has the home ground advantage."

"Wait, I thought you were a patrol officer," Scavenger said, "You've served on the Lost Light?"

"Never set foot on it. But I've seen the blueprints. Take the next right."

"How does a cop get access to blueprints for the flagship of the Autobot fleet?"

Prowl would have rolled his eyes if he wasn’t in his alt-mode, which he was struggling to get used to--Pharma had gotten bored once and completely rebuilt it after initially taking away his vehicle mode altogether to make Prowl part of the gestalt, but it didn’t handle as well as the old one.

“You really think Autobot high command would waste someone like me on border patrols? I’m not a patrol officer, you idiot! That’s just what I told Pharma when I was checking on that secretive little operation he was running on Delphi!”

Scavenger visibly cringed at the insult, embarrassment and hurt joining the fear he was broadcasting over their bond, and Prowl felt a twinge of guilt which he hurriedly suppressed.

“Are you like… a secret agent or something then?” Mixmaster asked in the silence that followed.

Prowl didn't answer, instead concentrating on the twists and turns of the corridors, working out the fastest route to the docking port where they'd left his shuttle.

\---

They stopped just before the dock access room, all changing out of their alt-modes in order to move quietly. Prowl, being smallest and least conspicuous, crept to the front and peered around the final corner before taking a few careful steps into the room. " _He's not here,_ " he sent over their comms, while waving them forwards.

"I can't believe it!" Scavenger said as they all scrambled for the docking bridge's door, "We beat him here! We're actually going to get out of this alive!"

A surge of relief echoed through their bond, and even Prowl allowed himself a faint glimmer of hope that he might survive this.

"Mixmaster, get the bridge door," he said, keeping a wary eye on the entrance.

"Er, what code did you lock it with?"

"Seven seven four eight six two."

Mixmaster punched the code in, but the door failed to open. "Are you sure, Prowl? It's not working."

"Yes, try it again."

The door bleeped a no-access tone again.

The relief they were feeling suddenly soured.

"Long Haul, Bonecrusher, you need to get that door open," Prowl said urgently, keeping his eyes on the door, "He could arrive at any second."

The two Constructicons pushed Mixmaster out of the way, dug their fingers into the door, and started peeling it off its hinges.

"Oh, _scrap_ \--!" Bonecrusher swore as the door came away from the wall.

Prowl found himself lifted off his feet as the atmosphere in the room started rushing out into open space.

" _The fragging shuttle's gone!_ " Bonecrusher shouted through their commlink, " _Hold onto something!_ ”

Bonecrusher and Long Haul had both latched onto the door frame, Hook had managed to launch the grappling gun attached to his arm and was hanging in midair. Mixmaster had managed to wrap himself around a control panel, and Scavenger had simply magnetised his tracks, sticking to the metal floor. Prowl made a desperate grab for a support column, but he was already too far away.

He felt Bonecrusher's hand just brush the edge of one of the doors on his back before he bounced off the edge of the docking bridge and tumbled out into empty space.

" _Someone do something!_ " Bonecrusher shouted through comms at maximum volume, as the last of the atmosphere rushed out of the room.

The Constructicons could already feel the pinch in their sparks that meant their sixth was getting too far away.

Hook dropped to the ground with a thud and ran out into the docking bridge, steadying himself with one hand and aiming his grappling gun towards Prowl.


	12. Chapter Twelve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops, this chapter took longer than I thought to finish. Sorry for the wait. The good news is, while I was struggling to write the first scene in this chapter, I got most of the next two chapters written, so there should be at least one more chapter up before Christmas.

Long Haul and Bonecrusher sealed up the gaping hole in the wall by rolling the door back over the hole and mashing the edges up to the frame until it was airtight.

While they dealt with that, Hook was trying to remove his grapple from Prowl’s leg as the Autobot seethed quietly.

“You’re not going to be able to change into vehicle mode until this damage is fixed properly,” he said, and winced as the anger coming from Prowl’s end of the bond increased. “Look, I’m sorry I got you with the grapple, but this was the only way to save you. It’s not like we had time to rig anything else up.”

"I'm not angry at you," Prowl growled, then shut off his eyes for a second, regaining control over his temper. "You did well. Sustaining a moderate amount of damage is preferable to dying."

"Then why _are_ you angry? Because all those bad feelings you're pumping out are starting to itch..."

Prowl was silent for a moment, conscious of the fact that the others were listening as well. Then he sighed. "I should have realised that the shuttle was missing when the door code wouldn't work."

"...so you're mad at yourself? Prowl, it's ok. Everyone makes mistakes sometimes. At least nobody died."

"But it was so _obvious_. I _should_ have known. I'm not thinking clearly, and I don't know what's wrong with me."

Hook glanced up at him and shrugged. "You're scared. We all are."

"I'm _not_ scared," Prowl snapped.

"Yes, you are. You can't lie to us, Prowl. We can feel what you're feeling."

"Yeah," Long Haul interjected, coming to stand behind Prowl, "But you're way more scared than any of us."

"Long Haul, that's not helping," Hook said reproachfully, without looking up from trying to remove his grapple without causing more damage to Prowl's leg.

"I'm not just saying it for the sake of it, I have a point. Prowl's not what we thought, right? Don't the rest of you want to know what he was doing on Delphi? How he knows the _Lost Light_ so well? Knew Overlord is onboard? Why _Overlord_ knew him by _name_? I don't like being _lied_ to."

"Get used to it," Prowl said, "The answers to all of those questions are classified."

Long Haul growled dangerously and loomed over the black and white Autobot. " _Classified_? We could _die_ here, and you're withholding information that could _help_ , you selfish--"

"Long Haul," Hook interrupted, "If you're going to be looming over us anyway, do me a favour and hold Prowl down while I take this out?"

"Gladly."

"Wait, don't touch me--"

Prowl's protest was cut off as Long Haul crouched down beside him and planted both massive hands on his chest, pushing him down to the ground, the edge of one of his hands also managing to cover the lower half of Prowl's face.

Hook leaned his bodyweight on Prowl's leg to keep it still, then activated the grapple's winch, winding the cable back into his arm. He angled it carefully so that it wouldn't cause too much damage on its way out, but Prowl still let out a muffled scream when the barbed chunk of metal was torn out of his leg.

"...can I let go now?" Long Haul asked.

"Should be fine."

"Good. He _bit_ me."

Long Haul pulled his hands back and Prowl scrabbled away from him, glaring fiercely.

"There you go, you little savage, that wasn't so bad, was it?" Long Haul glared back, rubbing a brand new set of dents in his already battered hand.

"Some _warning_ would've been nice," Prowl shot at Hook, who shrugged unapologetically.

"We've got to move quickly, try and find the shuttle. Can you walk?"

Prowl pushed himself to his feet. His leg wasn't bending properly, but it would support his weight. "Yes. Let's go."

They were halfway to the door when it opened from the other side.

“ _There_ you are,” Overlord practically purred, his frame taking up the entire doorway, “I’ve been waiting for you outside! I thought you must have gotten lost or something. I have to say, I’m impressed you got here before me. You’re full of surprises, aren't you Prowl? I’m only sorry I forgot to tell you I’d moved the shuttle… in hindsight, this wasn’t really a fair race, was it?”

Prowl didn’t have to look to know there were no other exists from the room, which was a large storage bay into which shuttles docked on the bridge could be unloaded. The bay was massive, with a high enough ceiling that Overlord could fit under it twice over, meaning that he was no longer disadvantaged by small corridors he could barely fit in.

“Primus, we’re _trapped_ ,” he heard Scavenger whisper behind him.

Overlord stepped into the room and let the door close, then with one fist he crunched up the edge of the door into the frame to prevent it from being easily opened.

"What're we gonna do, Prowl?" Bonecrusher asked, "How do we get out?"

" _Split up,_ " Prowl sent via comms, " _Keep him busy, don't let him get his hands on you. Try and break the door open when he's distracted. We're smaller and faster, we might still get out of this..._ "

The Constructicons shared an uneasy look. Splitting up was not a tactic they usually employed.

"Now!" Prowl shouted as Overlord charged them, " _Scatter_!"

With the triple-changer bearing down on them, the Constructicons did as ordered, running in five different directions.

Prowl knew that with his injury he was going to have the hardest time keeping out of Overlord's clutches, so he waited until Overlord was almost on top of him before he suddenly dove under his outstretched arm and rolled behind him, counting on Overlord's massive size to make it difficult for him to turn quickly.

Unfortunately, the triple-changer turned out to be unbelievably agile for his size, reversing his momentum by crouching down and stabbing the fingers of one hand into the metal floor, swinging around and hurtling after Prowl while barely losing any speed.

"Boss, look out!" Bonecrusher shouted a redundant warning; Prowl was already backing away as fast as his injury would allow him to move.

Just before Overlord could grab Prowl, Scavenger hurtled past behind the 'bot, catching him around the waist and tucking him unceremoniously under one arm without even slowing down.

Scavenger was faster than Overlord, and Prowl was starting to think they might actually get away when Scavenger, running at top speed, tripped over, skidding along the ground and dropping Prowl.

They both scrambled back to their feet, but not fast enough. A massive hand closed around Prowl and swung him up to Overlord’s eye level, and he felt Scavenger’s terror spike at he was also lifted into the air.

Prowl managed to work his hand free and fired off a few shots with the blaster he’d brought with him from his shuttle, the bursts of light pinging harmlessly off the surface of Overlord’s eye. The triple-changer chuckled and shook Prowl until he lost his grip on the blaster and it fell to the ground, where Overlord stood on it.

"Would you like me to tell you how I escaped, before I kill you all? I bet you're just _dying_ to know, Prowl."

"I am," Prowl said, glancing around the room, checking where the other Constructicons were, desperately hoping to stall for time until he could come up with some way of escaping--no matter how unlikely that was. He was pleased to see Bonecrusher following orders, trying to pry open the door behind Overlord’s back. Unfortunately the ‘con didn’t seem to be having much luck.

"It was that spy of yours. You wanted to know more about me, didn't you? You couldn't just leave well enough alone. Your plan of dumping me on an uninhabited planet would have worked, if you could have kept your curiosity in check. See, the thing about a cortical psychic patch, is that it turns out it works both ways..."

Prowl's eyes widened. Cortical reading technology was brand new at the time, something Prowl's spies had brought him from Shockwave's laboratories. There had been no indication in any of the research that it was dangerous for the user in any way; only the victim.

Overlord laughed, squeezing his hand slightly. Prowl hissed as his injured leg was jostled.

"I got into his head. He didn't stand a chance. Once I forced him to release me, I tore him into a dozen pieces."

Prowl snarled, trying to struggle free, knowing it was pointless. Overlord outmatched all six of them together in every physical sense, and he was cunning enough that Prowl wasn't sure he'd win in a battle of wits, either.

Still, he didn't like the idea of being crushed or tortured to death, and was determined to put up a fight.

"Do you want to know why _we_ came here?" He forced out through a staticky voice box.

Overlord tilted his head curiously. "I know you're stalling for time, Prowl. What are you expecting to happen? Last minute rescue? Primus himself to intervene?"

"Does it matter? Nothing we can do will save us. Might was well prolong the inevitable."

The giant mech triple-changer snorted. "Very well then. Tell me whatever story you've thought up to extend your lifespan."

"The war is over. Cybertron is at peace. Optimus Prime wanted the Autobots who died here laid to rest, so he sent a team to investigate."

Overlord tipped back his head and roared with laughter. "Peace? Cybertron at peace! That's a good one. Ha!"

"'s true," Scavenger muttered in a pained voice from Overlord's other hand, "We're the fraggin' _Constructicons_. You think we'd be working for this piece of Autobot scum if we hadn't been ordered to by Megatron himself?"

Prowl would almost have felt amused at the sense of apology he received from Scavenger over the gestalt bond, if he weren't preoccupied with mortal terror. The 'con was playing along, but even despite the immediate danger he was in he wanted to make sure Prowl didn't think he was serious about the 'Autobot scum' comment.

Scavenger's words gave the triple-changer pause. He held the smallest of the Constructicons up to his eye level to get a better look at him, then glanced around at the other green and purple 'cons, who were carefully keeping a safe distance. His red eyes narrowed to slits. "...Yes. Constructicons. I recognise you from the colosseum."

"So even if you get back to Cybertron you won't make it very far," Prowl said, pushing as much scathing smugness into his voice as he could muster, "You'll be facing a united front--and we still have that Immobiliser we used on you last time, just in case the Prime himself and the one 'con you could never beat in the arena working together aren't enough to take you out."

Overlord suddenly snarled furiously and Prowl found himself being hurled across the storage bay.

He was too well trained to vocalise the pain of the impact, but he _felt_ the Constructicons flinch at the crunching sound his frame made when it hit the wall and bounced to the ground.

Prowl was free from Overlord's clutches, at least temporarily, but his processor felt fuzzy. He'd hit the ground head-first, and needed to reboot some of his systems and reroute them through other circuits before he could rejoin the fight.

For now, Overlord had turned his anger on Scavenger, who he hadn't tossed away. "If nothing else I will kill all six of you slowly and painfully," the triple-changer growled, "Starting with _you_."

They all felt the echo of the agonising pressure Scavenger felt as Overlord began to squeeze his hand shut further, crushing the smallest Constructicon.


	13. Chapter Thirteen

" _Help me! Guys! Prowl! Please!_ "

Prowl couldn't tell if Scavenger's voice was coming over the comms or through the gestalt bond--it certainly wasn't coming from his voice box, which was spitting static as it was slowly crushed beneath Overlord's massive hand.

The others had already gathered together behind Long Haul, standing protectively in front of Prowl, who was still struggling to get to regain his bearings after the blow to his processor. He could tell that they were planning to rush their opponent, to try to tear him off Scavenger so they could make a run for it.

Or...

No. Prowl could feel their intentions through the bond, now. He had never been able to sense them so clearly. They just wanted to get close enough to Scavenger so they could combine.

" _Don't be stupid,_ " he sent over the comms, " _It won't work. Combining will just make us a bigger, slower target._ "

" _Trust me, Prowl, we're stronger together,_ " Bonecrusher's voice echoed, and this time Prowl was certain he heard it through the bond rather than comms. " _Stronger than him._ "

" _Nothing is stronger than him. We're all dead._ "

" _We won't know if we don't try, you useless piece of scrap!_ " Long Haul blasted through the gestalt bond so loudly that even the other Constructicons flinched.

Prowl was about to return the insult when a wave of unbearable pain washed over them, followed by a shriek that echoed through their comm system and their bond. He forced himself to stagger to his feet so he could see what had caused the pain.

Overlord had torn one of Scavenger's arms off. The 'con was still screaming, though all that came out of his voice box was white noise.

That was when Prowl stopped thinking for himself.

Something in their bond took over as, for the first time since Prowl had been incorporated into the gestalt, all six were united upon a single course of action: destroy Overlord.

They started running towards Scavenger, but things became hazy, and suddenly somehow all six of them were together, Overlord blinking in confusion at his empty fist.

It didn't hurt like it always had when Pharma had run tests on them. On Delphi, combining had always been purely mechanical; they changed their own bodies into various limbs and attached to each other. Pharma had been frustrated at how badly it worked; six individuals trying to control their part of the combiner, altogether failing to be coordinated. This time was different. It felt like they were melting into one another, and Prowl would have wondered why if he still possessed the necessary individuality.

But there was only one now, a single mind and body.

Overlord was staring up at the massive being, larger than their combined mass should have allowed, for the first time showing genuine shock on his face.

The combiner kicked out at Overlord, who was still staring, catching him in the side and hurling him across the room. He bounced off the far wall and tumbled to a stop before scrambling back to his feet. Watching him hit the wall was satisfying; it felt like retribution.

"What the hell _are_ you?" Overlord shouted, trying to regain control of the situation. He definitely wasn't used to being smaller than anyone.

"I am... Devastator," the being rumbled, moving slowly, trying to get used to his own existence. It was different than it used to be. Parts of it were the same, but something was missing, and something new was there.

But regardless, Devastator had come into existence with a purpose, and he intended to carry it out. "I will destroy you..." he told his opponent, and kicked out again, but this time Overlord easily rolled out of the way. He was fast, and Devastator was still learning how to move his limbs.

Overlord fired a few shots from a blaster attached to his arm, but the shots bounced harmlessly off Devastator's torso. The triple-changer took on a surprised look, and started backing away, sliding into an odd sideways stance to make himself look smaller.

Sensing weakness in his opponent, Devastator shambled forwards, taking only two steps to cross the room and loom over his small opponent. He reached for the now-dwarfed monster, but something in him warned him that Overlord was tricky, cunning, and he became suspicious of how quickly he backed down.

The combiner pulled his hand away just as Overlord spun back to face him properly, his previous, weak stance having hidden his arm as he transformed it into the fusion cannon from his tank mode. The blast just barely missed Devastator's hand; if he hadn't have moved away so suddenly, it would have hit him right in the middle of the palm.

He wondered if the fusion cannon could hurt him, but, while the new part of him provided him with detailed specs for the weapon, he had no prior experience with injury in this form from that sort of weapon to draw from. Best not to risk it. He should continue dodging any blasts from the cannon, and try to disable it.

He saw Overlord adjusting his aim, powering the cannon up for a second shot, and was suddenly overcome with indecision. Part of him wanted to move cautiously, avoid injury and assess the situation, while part of him wanted to ignore the danger and simply hit Overlord until he stopped being a threat.

The cannon fired, and he instinctively jerked backwards, trying to dodge, but he wasn't fast enough. He watched in horror as the blast hit him squarely in the chest, and then... nothing. No pain, no damage, no loss of power as the six sparks rotating in his chest were snuffed out. He stared at the mark on his chest for a moment, surprised that a sooty smudge on his purple paint was the only sign of the powerful weapon's direct hit.

Then Devastator saw that Overlord was staring as well, unmoving. He thought it was genuine shock, this time. The monster's most powerful weapon had done no more than scuffed his paint.

Devastator smiled, and Overlord turned to run.

The combiner stopped his opponent from fleeing by driving his fist into his back, knocking him down and crushing him against the metal floor.

Overlord shouted a muffled swearword as the decking creaked from the force of the blow, but Overlord was tough, nigh-invulnerable.

The floor gave way before Overlord's armour plating did, and he dropped through to the deck below.

Devastator realised his mistake at the same time as Overlord took the opportunity to run, dodging into a corridor too small for Devastator to enter.

The combiner roared in fury, trying to reach into the corridor and grab him, but the triple-changer was too quick, already out of reach.

Again, he was struck with indecision. How should he proceed? His six sparks wouldn't be as strong if he let them separate, but he was too big to follow, the corridor too small.

He stared at the hole he'd punched in the solid metal floor, then decided that things like corridor size were no obstacle. He smiled again, and reached for the hole, tearing through the floor like it was paper, then ripping into the wall, making a hole large enough for himself. He crashed through several decks at once, moving in the same direction Overlord had run. While his movements may be slower, Devastator's massive size meant that he covered distance quickly, and it wasn't long before he tore out a wall and found Overlord behind it, running for the next door.

He didn't make it. Devastator simply reached out and picked him up, the same way Overlord had picked up some parts of Devastator earlier. Maybe he should try squeezing, like Overlord had...

Overlord looked more surprised than anything else at the crackling sound of his outer plating crumpling slightly. The damage wasn't bad enough to be painful yet, but Overlord had never been damaged before.

This was going to be a new and alarming experience for him. Devastator was looking forwards to it. He squeezed a bit tighter, and this time Overlord did let out a grunt of pain.

There was something else Devastator wanted to do. Proper revenge should match, shouldn't it?

He shuffled Overlord around in his hands until one of his arms was free. The little monster took the opportunity to try shooting him a few more times with his blaster. One of the shots hit him in one eye and the brightness shorted out the optic temporarily, but he could still see clearly through the other. He tore the blaster away to prevent further irritation.

Then Devastator grabbed the arm in one hand and _pulled_.

Overlord roared in pain, his face twisting in shock and fear. He had just been presented with the first evidence in his entire existence that he wasn't impervious to harm.

The arm came away from his body with an unpleasant snapping noise, though it was drowned out by Overlord's shouting. Instead of a wordless roar he started yelling threats and insults.

“Abomination! Freak of nature! How dare you! I’ll destroy you! All of you, and dump your sorry remains out an airlock! I’ll kill--”

His tirade cut off suddenly as Devastator started peeling back the thick plating which covered Overlord’s spark chamber.

“I will destroy you,” Devastator rumbled, and a new part of him prompted him to add “You are too dangerous to be allowed to live.”

“No! You can’t do this! What about the code? You can’t kill a prisoner of war!”

“There is no more war,” the massive combiner replied, “This is not a war crime. This is murder, plain and simple.”

A sickly green light filled the darkened ship as Devastator finally got through the half-dozen layers of impossibly strong metal to expose Overlord’s spark.

He shifted his grip again, and pressed down on the spark with his thumb.

Overlord’s final scream cut off abruptly as the green light was extinguished.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this is the third chapter dedicated to the confrontation with Overlord, and there's a bit more to go before the story returns to Cybertron.
> 
> ...this is getting bigger than I ever expected it to. There's probably three or four chapters left in The Reintegration Act, but that's hardly the end of the story. Time to think up a title for the next arc...


	14. Chapter Fourteen

Prowl came out of stasis lock lying face down on the ground, feeling sluggish and battered. He tried to move, only to find that he was rendered immobile by something heavy lying over his legs.

He panicked briefly, thinking that he must be trapped under rubble from the destroyed ship, but then the weight shifted slightly, mumbled a slurred “sorry,” and rolled off him.

Prowl managed to struggle into a sitting position and look around.

They were in the depths of the Lost Light somewhere, the internal structure all but gone, wires and cables dangling from the broken edges of corridors and rooms.

He was sitting at the edge of a Constructicon pileup. It seemed that they had all fallen in a heap once they ceased being Devastator, and hadn’t yet found the strength to get back on their feet. Scavenger was lying at his feet, clutching at the socket where his arm usually went.

“Are you lot awake?” he asked tiredly. His head was swimming, and his processors felt overfilled.

Slowly, reluctantly, five pairs of red eyes blinked on and turned to look at him.

"What the  _ hell _ was  _ that _ ?" he demanded, once he was sure they were all paying attention.

"Uhhhhhh..." someone muttered.

"We've got something we need to tell you..." Bonecrusher said from somewhere near the bottom of the pile.

"Oh  _ really _ ."

The Constructicons finally started moving, dragging themselves upright and settling into a rough half-circle in front of Prowl. He could feel them having a frantic conversation through their bond, but he wasn't included. He scowled at them and waited for the conversation to end.

Eventually they quietened, and Hook had apparently been nominated to speak.

"Well, er, ever since you learned we existed you've assumed that Pharma got the idea to create a combiner and bonded our sparks together somehow as well as rebuilding our alt-modes... but we were actually already this way when he captured us."

"You were combiners  _ before _ Delphi?" Prowl demanded, staring wide-eyed at the others, "For how long? If Pharma didn't make you, who did?"

"No one  _ made _ us," Long Haul told him.

" _ Primus _ made us," Scavenger disagreed.

"There's no such thing as--"

"We were came out of the Well like this," Mixmaster said with a shrug, cutting off the argument Long Haul was about to start. "One giant spark that split into six and formed six frames. Pharma found out what we were and wanted to figure out how to make more like us, but he couldn't. That made him mad, so he just started... doing stuff to us. Experimenting, seeing what we could take. He killed Scrapper just to see if we would die as well."

"Why  _ didn't _ you?" Prowl asked, "I feel like I'm going to die if I'm too far away from you."

"How sweet," Long Haul interjected sarcastically, and Prowl bristled.

"That's  _ not _ what I mean and you know it," he said acidly.

"We know, Prowl," Bonecrusher said, elbowing Long Haul into silence, "If one of us gets too far away, they  _ would _ die. That's how Pharma killed Scrapper. Took him out of the base and kept going until his spark stretched too thin. But with the rest of us together, it hurt us less. So when Scrapper died, we were close enough to each other to compensate. But we weren't really...  _ whole _ . Not until you came along. I dunno how he did it, but Pharma incorporated you into our bond! Melded your spark to ours, somehow. You're different from Scrapper, but you filled the hole."

The fact that combiners could occur naturally was staggering. Their natural form of combining had made them so much more powerful when together than simply adding the six of them together. "Where did all that extra mass come from?" he asked eventually, "We were much larger than we should have been."

"It's just the same as how a lot of people can shunt mass into subspace when they change into their alt-modes, except we seem to be able to draw as much mass as we need. Believe it or not, there have been times when we've combined to be even larger than we were just now."

"I see. That... shouldn't be possible. There are limits to what can be stored in subspace."

Hook shrugged. "I stopped trying to work out the physics of it a long time ago. Also, there's one more thing we need to warn you about..."

Prowl narrowed his eyes. "And what would that be?"

"You might notice that your processor is feeling a bit fuzzy..."

"Yes, and?"

"Well, it isn't just our bodies and sparks that merge when we combine. Our minds do as well. You'll find that you've ended up with a lot of our memories, and us yours. They'll start to resolve over the next hour or so, then you'll start feeling clear-headed again..."

"You... have my memories?" Prowl sounded more worried than any of the Constructicons had ever heard.

"Er, yes. Some of them, at least."

"But I have a lot of classified information stored in my processor--I swore an oath never to leak Autobot secrets...!"

"You haven't really leaked them, it's not like we're going to tell anyone," Bonecrusher said, trying to sound comforting.

"Yeah, and the war's over anyway," Mixmaster added.

Hook shook his head and started clambering to his feet. "Look, we can worry about what we know later. For now, how about we find the shuttle and get off this giant floating tomb?"

\---

Prowl had to concentrate to bring to mind the code to override the locks Rodimus had entered on all of the Lost Light’s systems. Normally it would have come to him instantly, but his processor was busy trying to sort through the memories he’d ended up with from the Constructicons. He kept being treated to flashes of life before the war, helping to build a giant arena, or the occasional battle or rousing speech from Megatron. Feeling their admiration for the warmonger secondhand was unnerving and uncomfortable to say the least.

They were all in similar shape. Their eyes were unfocused and it took them a while to respond if anyone spoke to them.

“How do you know the code?” Mixmaster asked blurrily as the lights on the bridge blinked back to life.

Prowl didn’t bother telling him that the answer was classified. If they had his memories the same way he had theirs, it wouldn’t take long for him to dig up the answer himself.

“Oh. You… you’re…” Mixmaster’s eyes widened, “You’re the head of blackops? The Autobots  _ had  _ blackops? Oh, Primus, my head hurts…”

“Wait, you were the one who set all this up, weren’t you?” Bonecrusher asked, “You’re the one who gave the order to transport Overlord…”

“...and you ordered the captain to shut everything down and kill himself if he escaped. That’s  _ cold _ .”

“It was necessary,” Prowl snapped at Long Haul.

“Hey, I didn’t say it was a bad thing.” The huge ‘con was grinning at him. “I like the way you think, Prowl.”

“Your approval means the world to me,” Prowl said bitterly, “If you're all done wallowing in my memories, how about we find some transport?"

He prodded a blinking light on the monitor display, "Overlord moved my shuttle to the main hangar, and there are a few shuttles in the ancillary bay that we could look at. It should be fully stocked with the tools and equipment we'll need for repairs, as well."

\---

They brought two shuttles to the main hangar along with Prowl’s patrol shuttle; one to take apart to repair the patroller, and the other, the  _ Leading Light _ , as a spare.

“Why are we even bothering to repair this old hunk of junk?” Bonecrusher asked, “We could just keep the  _ Leading Light _ . It’s state of the art! Well, it was when it was built, and I bet it’s newer than this crappy thing.”

“Having a spare shuttle will come in handy.” Prowl replied, “Trust me on this. We  _ will  _ take the  _ Leading Light _ \--it’s bigger, and it’s intended for transporting people, so you four won’t have to sleep in cells… but I’ll tether the patrol shuttle via autopilot and bring it along.”

Bonecrusher shrugged. “Sure thing, Prowl. Well, we’d better get on with repairs, then.”

“Yes. We’re only about a week away from Cybertron at this point, but Pharma will have gotten there  _ weeks  _ ahead of us. We can’t waste any more time.”

He felt a collective shudder through the bond at the mention of Pharma. He felt the same--on top of his own unpleasant memories of painful experiments, he now had vivid memories of the same done to the other five, as well as a heart-wrenching memory of the hollow, screaming paid and loss they'd all felt when Scrapper died.

"We're gonna kill him," Scavenger muttered, and Prowl didn't bother to pretend he intended to follow procedure and report Pharma's crimes, having him arrested and going through a lengthy Autobot trial.

"Yes. We are going to kill him."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to upload the next chapter today as well, and then that's it for Reintegration; the next arc of the story will be in a separate fic.


	15. Chapter Fifteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone. Thank you for reading this fic, it's been fun to write. This is the last chapter of Reintegration. The next arc of the story will be called Investigation, keep an eye out for the first chapter in the next week or so. Also, I made a Tumblr account, if anyone is interested: http://trippinghazard.tumblr.com I'll post links to any fics I upload on it.
> 
> To those of you who celebrate it: Merry Christmas.

Ironfist cycled through the various screens he was keeping an eye on. No change. He was pulling a double shift on monitor duty, because with half of the command staff on Earth the roster had large holes in it. He didn't mind at all, but after twenty hours of no change, he was starting to get bored.

He spun his chair in a circle, watching the monitor room go past slowly. He sighed and cycled through the screens again, then pulled his datapad out of one of his compartments. He opened the most recent document and scrolled through it, rereading what he'd written and checking for mistakes. He couldn't spot any, but that probably didn't mean there weren't any there.

He sighed again and entered Thundercracker's frequency into his comm system.

" _ Heeeeey little guy, _ " came the almost immediate response, " _ Finished obsessing over finding mistakes in that chapter yet? _ "

Ironfist grimaced. Thundercracker had apparently noticed he'd been being more careful about his spelling in the last few chapters.

" _ I only just finished it, _ " he lied, " _ Do you want me to send it to you? _ "

" _ Yeah! I'm off duty at the moment, I got time. Hang on, aren't you on monitor duty at the moment? _ "

" _ Yes, but it's basically dead up here. Nothing's happening. _ "

He started the file transfer from his datapad to Thundercracker's.

" _ That sucks. Must be boring. _ "

" _ Only a little. I don't mind. And if I get really bored I can talk to a friend or something. _ "

" _ So, just me then. _ "

" _ I have other friends! _ "

" _ No you don't. _ "

" _ I do! _ "

" _ That's sad, Ironfist. Your only friend is a guy who tried to blackmail you, then you have to go and lie about it. _ "

" _ Do you want this chapter or not? _ "

" _ You already sent it, genius. _ "

" _ Oh, right. _ "

He heard Thundercracker laughing at the other end, and waited irritably for him to stop.

" _...anyway, when do you get off work? _ " he finally asked.

" _ Another four hours. _ "

" _ That's just before I go back on duty. Do you want to meet at the main hall? We can grab our rations and I can correct your spelling in person... _ "

" _ Well, aside from getting my spelling picked apart, that sounds--oh wow! I'm sorry, I have to go! _ " Ironfist suddenly sat up straight in his chair, enlarging one of the many screens he was watching to full size.

" _ What? Why? I thought it was quiet up there. Are you mad because I laughed at you? _ "

" _ No, no. A craft just entered sensor range, it looks like a Cybertronian shuttle! _ "

" _ Cool! Hope it's friendlies. Well, I'll see you later little guy. And I'll proofread this chapter before then. _ "

" _ Thank you. See you in four hours. _ "

Ironfist ended the comm call and sent a new one to Ultra Magnus' frequency, but he only got the Commander's polite but firmly-worded 'busy' message. He'd have to contact someone else in the command staff.

\---

"Thanks for coming, sir. I mean doctor. Ultra Magnus and Bulkhead are both busy, and Knock Out... doesn't actually know anything about Autobot codes, which he says I should have realised before bothering him. You're technically the next highest ranked person on the planet at the moment."

"You're most welcome, er… I'm sorry, what was your name?"

"Ironfist, sir. I mean, doctor."

"Ironfist, of course. Good name. Very imaginative. So, what's the problem?"

Ironfist hunched down a little. He hated Pharma’s forced, overly polite manner, and the snide little remarks he always made about the Vehicons' names. "There's what seems to be an automatic coded transmission coming in on an endless loop from a shuttle that's inbound, but I can't decode it. It's an old cypher, and I don't know what it is. I was hoping you might recognise it?"

"Let me see..." Pharma leaned in to study the message on the screen. “The coding looks around four centuries old. Do you have Ultra Magnus’ cryptology files? I think that was just before the Simanzi Cypher was cracked by the ‘cons. Try that.”

“Ok.” The tiny former-Decepticon tapped away at the keyboard for a few moments, searching through cryptology files, before he found the right one and pulled it up. Then he squinted at the screen, muttering under his breath.

"Don't you need to enter the message into the decrypter?"

"No, I can work it out in my head just as fast."

"That's quite impressive, Ironfist. You must be quite clever. What does it say?"

"It says...  _ This is Director Prowl of Autobot Intelligence with a maximum priority message for the Optimus Prime. You cannot trust... _ Ohhh."

Ironfist trailed off, but it was too late. He heard the clink as something was pressed against the back of his head and the telltale whine of an energy weapon powering up. His hands froze on the keyboard.

"You're a bit  _ too  _ clever, as it turns out," the doctor said, "Too bad for you."

"Please don’t kill me. I... I won't tell anyone."

"Really? Can you tell me honestly that you won't go running off to Ultra Magnus the second I don't have a gun to your head anymore?"

Ironfist let out a staticky sob, and then slowly shook his head. “N… no.”

"Well, at least your last words weren’t a lie."

Pharma squeezed the trigger.

\---

He pushed Ironfist's limp body off the monitor, then used the Vehicon's access to erase the last call log. He had considered erasing all call logs for the day, to add to the confusion, but in the end decided to leave the previous record--an outbound call to Knock Out which lasted for just under a minute.

He didn't need to worry about the access records for the entrance to the room, because Ironfist had been kind and stupid enough to open the door for him when he knocked.

He kicked Ironfist's body further out of his way and began systematically shutting down every security camera in the complex, then he erased the last hour of footage from the monitor room and the hallways, and medbay for good measure.

Then, using Prowl's own authorisation codes, which had never been erased because he was presumed dead, he activated the planetary defence satellites.

He would have liked nothing more than to stick around and watch Prowl's shuttle be destroyed as it entered Cybertronian airspace, but he knew that the second they fired Ultra Magnus would receive an alert ping.

Instead he sauntered out of the monitor room, checked there was no one in the corridors, and headed back to his own quarters.


End file.
